


In The Fade

by LinkWorshiper



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Horror, M/M, Slow Burn, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-04-20 10:06:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 92,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4783400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinkWorshiper/pseuds/LinkWorshiper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Thomas is in New York with Lord Grantham, strange dreams start to plague Jimmy on a regular basis, keeping him unable to sort which ghosts are real or imagined. Soon, it becomes evident that Thomas himself might be the only one who knows anything about the things Jimmy never dared to believe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, all: welcome to the nightmare. This is a weird one, and sort of an experimental dive into the weird horror tradition set by HP Lovecraft -- albeit with quite a few liberties taken. I hope you all manage to find it interesting, even if it's not nearly as good as the master himself! I think I've tried to generally credit the weird horror references within the text, though you can assume most of it is Lovecraft's, with a smattering of Robert W. Chambers and August Derleth and the like. Refer to Lovecraft's Dream Cycle and the Cthulu Cycle for background.
> 
> Story title is actually a Queens of the Stone Age song, though I must admit the idea springboarded of the Arctic Monkeys B-side, 'You're So Dark'. And my weird fixation on this kind of writing, haha. The story begins towards the end of Season Four and will continue through Season Five, and maybe into Six, depending on where I am in writing as the blasted thing airs, haha.

 

Yellow moonbeams filtered down through the high windows of the servants' hall at Downton Abbey, printing large squares of cosmic light across the long table that occupied its center. It was well into the witching hour, long after those who lacked gumption had retreated beneath the safety of their coverlets. Only those who were brave sat up in the company of shadows that danced wildly in the flickering candlelight.

“– _a coastline of mingled mud, ooze, and weedy Cyclopean masonry which can be nothing less than the tangible substance of earth's supreme terror –“_

Sitting sideways in the chair at the piano, Jimmy read from a pulp magazine called _Weird Tales_ , which was wrapped around itself in one hand, his other affixed to the ivories to accentuate the haunted lilt in his tone with a spooky chord or two when he saw fit. He enunciated his rugged voice with an air of theatrical mystery as he recited the tale, his eyes wide and aflame with the glint of wick fire.

“ – _the nightmare corpse-city of R'lyeh, that was built in measureless aeons behind history by the vast, loathsome shapes that seeped down from the dark stars...._ ”

“Ahh, turn back!” Daisy suddenly cried, slapping her hands against the sides of her face as she grew more concerned for the sailors Jimmy was currently describing. Her jolt sent her knees thumping up against the underside of the table, causing the whole thing to shudder loudly enough to startle even Mr. Bates, who had been listening with the most stoic expression out of all of them. Anna sucked in a sharp breath, Ivy screamed, and Alfred quickly reached out to grab her hand in shock – and though he tried his best to play it off as though he was being brave, he gripped her fingers tightly enough to make their tips turn white.

Meanwhile, Jimmy, darkly amused, could only chuckle to himself as he plunked out an eerie tune on the piano and continue to read with no shortage of dramatic presence:

“ _There lay great Cthulhu and his hordes, hidden in green, slimy vaults and sending out at last, after cycles incalculable, the thoughts that spread fear to the dreams of the sensitive and called imperiously to the faithful to come on a pilgrimage of liberation and restoration. All this Johansen did not suspect, but God knows he soon saw enough!”_

At the exclamation, he slammed his whole hand into the keyboard, sounding an unearthly tone that rippled through the others with terrific results. He threw his head back and laughed uproariously at the uniform start that had cut through the whole lot of them, losing his sense of place and mood as he continued to cackle at their short and addled nerves. “Your _faces_ ,” he barely managed to say as he slapped the magazine against his knee with glee; “Y'might've swallowed _shit_ with the way you were lookin'.”

“ _Jimmy_ ,” Alfred hissed indignantly; “There's _ladies_ here.”

“Not to worry, Alfred,” Anna spoke up from her place next to Mr. Bates. “I think even we ladies have managed to survive worse than Jimmy's _mouth_.”

“Not when he's spittin' out them stories, we're not,” Ivy piped up, still looking a little ashen despite the blush in her cheeks. “The way he goes on about it, you might even start believin' that stuff's real.”

“Maybe it _is_ ,” Jimmy sneered, hooking his fingers into a claw that enlarged against the wall as a monstrous shadow as he shook it at her with a ghostly hum: “ _Oooohh-ooooh_.”

“Oy, Jimmy, quit windin' her up,” Alfred admonished protectively, though his effort at machismo went largely unnoticed by Ivy: she was too busy trying to pretend as though everything Jimmy did was unimportant to her.

His elbow bent over the scrolling top of his chair, ear resting against his palm, Jimmy shrugged carelessly, not particularly bothered about either of them. Frankly, he was still a little sore over the enormous waste of time Ivy had proven to be. All that work to win some dandy bragging rights, and she hadn't even let him come close. It had only become that much more annoying in the aftermath with the way she'd started clinging to Alfred while still simpering at him as though she wanted to start the whole thing over again. Plain and simple, Jimmy wasn't interested if he wasn't going to get any nighttime perks out of her company, and his efforts could be better spent prowling for a girl who was a bit more willing. Besides, it was that much more pointless now that Thomas was abroad with Lord Grantham, and the need to put on airs around the house had sailed overseas with him. Alfred could bloody have her for all he cared.

On the other side of the table, Daisy had been sitting with her fingers clamped around the edge, staring into the heart of the tongue of fire that bounced atop the taper directly in front of her, muddling over Jimmy's earlier jeering. As if she had been holding a huge gulp of air she simply couldn't trap inside any longer, she suddenly blurted, “But who's to say it _weren't_ true?” She shivered visibly, as if a draft of cold air had passed right through her.

At once, Jimmy put on his spooky narrator's voice again, rolling the magazine and drawing it around the room to indicate each one of them: “Isn't that the mystery? What lurks in the shadows? What _creepin' fear_ lurks in the void of your dreams? When you wake up in a sweat, who's to say any of those horrors weren't just as real as anythin' else beneath God's bright stars?” Then he dropped the magazine and snapped around to face the piano and fluttered his hands across the keys to produce a maddening, off-the-cuff tune that was both arresting and wrong all at once.

“Lord, I'll never sleep now,” Ivy moaned, clearly bothered as she pressed the heels of her hands into her ears to muffle Jimmy's demonic scales. Her eyes swung around the dimly lit room looking for solace and finding none in Jimmy's turned back as his shoulders lifted and fell with each movement his fingers made upon the keyboard.

“Well, that's what you get for bein' so nosy about me magazines,” Jimmy derided irritably when, at last, he stopped playing and spun back around in his chair, somehow managing to look everywhere but at Ivy, even as he addressed her: “Curiosity kills the cat and all.”

“And will it kill us if we asked where these weird rags of yours came from, hm?” asked Mr. Bates with a note of wry amusement. It was clear the confused antics of youth were entertaining and, in an odd way, touching to him. But, except for a few private glances saved just for Anna, he kept his personal thoughts about his younger coworkers to himself, and, arms folded across his chest, just smirked instead.

For a beat or two, Jimmy's eyes flicked up and down Mr. Bate's figure, who so leisurely relaxed in his chair across the table, and then sniffed as casually as possible: “If you have to know, it's Mr. Barrow who sends 'em me. Said in one of his letters that he found 'em in some little bodega over in New York and thought of me straight away.”

“I'll bet he did,” Mr. Bates murmured quiet enough for only Anna to hear, his tone not unkind, but certainly still wrought with that dry amusement.

Anna stifled a giggle at the joke most of the staff liked to share behind closed doors, though she was clever enough to cover it up with a question: “And just how _is_ Mr. Barrow getting on in America?” she asked with a smile that was impossible for even Jimmy to be annoyed at.

“How should I know?” Jimmy said so quickly, he was practically spectral. He was quick to catch the arched eyebrows and flat stares he was getting in response, and recovered as neatly as possible, though there was still no hiding the stretch of his lips as he tried to mask a swallow. “He's only been in touch a few times, and it were to send me _these” –_ he snapped up the copy of _Weird Tales_ he'd been reading from off the floor and flapped it at his audience – “so it weren't very, y'know... _personal_ like.”

“Well, I suppose I just _assumed..._ ” Anna led on with a small tilt of her head as her eyes flicked up to Mr. Bates, a secret communication he seemed to understand perfectly well, even in the wobbling candlelight. He shoved his mouth to one side of his face as he watched Jimmy expectantly through the gloom.

“Does Mr. Barrow likes the stories, too?” Daisy interrupted as if she hadn't heard a single thing Anna had said, and just in time to keep the snide comment in Jimmy's mouth safely tucked beneath his tongue.

The question earned her a snort from Alfred, who had little love for Downton's underbutler. “Even I'm not that daft,” he said to her, crossing his arms contrarily over his broad chest. “I don't think Mr. Barrow'd be caught _dead_ readin' that sorta stuff.”

“S'not daft,” Daisy retorted, balling her fists on the tabletop as she blinked at Alfred through the field of candles that stood between them. She squared her shoulders in an effort to look self-assured as she said, “Mr. Barrow believes in ghosts, too, he does.”

The laughter that echoed through the room was boisterous enough that it threatened to stir Mr. Carson from his slumber all the way up in the attics, and snuffed out a candle or two with its gusto. Daisy puffed her cheeks tightened her eyebrows over her nose as the rest of them tried to contain their bemusement at such a suggestion. Even a desperate glance at Jimmy – who was usually Thomas's chief ally – proved fruitless: the blond seemed to find the idea hilarious, a repeated chuckle sneezing between his pursed lips as he tried to contain himself.

“It's true,” she tried to protest, though her voice was mostly drowned out by their continued laughter. “Sometimes, we talk to William, me and Mr. Barrow.”

At the mention of the dead footman, Anna and Mr. Bates abruptly choked on their mirth, quickly replacing it with an empathetic sorrow that cast a chilled, strange sort of silence over the rest of them. Mr. Bates, who was sitting beside Daisy, reached over to pat one of her tightened fists, gently consoling her, “I'm sorry, Daisy. I'm sure you still miss him even all these years later, but that's no excuse for Thomas take advantage of your grief.”

“What d'ya mean, takin' advantage?” Daisy wondered, cocking her head at him with a bewildered expression. “S'not like William's gone or sommat. He's still here, y'know.”

Concern overrode Mr. Bates's expression of sympathy, his hand tightening over hers as if he was trying to keep her anchored; “Daisy, William _is_ gone.”

With a huff, Daisy jerked her hand away, clearly upset by the lack of severity her claims were receiving. “You're only sayin' that 'cause you weren't ever 'round to hear it,” Daisy protested, flicking her eyes towards Jimmy and the old upright, “but William plays the piano for us all the time.”

“Just so I'm not missin' somethin', but when you say _us,_ ” Alfred spoke up skeptically, “we're still talkin' about _Mr. Barrow_ , yeah?” Something about the way he enunciated his words made his uncertainty seem far more rooted in the idea of Thomas Barrow telling ghost stories than the suggestion that the servants' hall was haunted by deceased staff members.

“Isn't that what I said?” Daisy huffed at the ginger footman with an edge she had never cast at him before, clearly growing more impatient with each moment.

Noting Daisy's distress, Anna took the opportunity to play the pacifist, and threw her attention back across the room with a query for the one person who might be able to settle the dispute: “Jimmy, did you know about this?”

Unfortunately for Anna, the whole debacle was agitating to Jimmy, and he responded tersely, “Why is it that everyone always figures I know everythin' that needs tellin' about Mr. Barrow, eh? I'm not his bloody keeper.”

Never particularly thrilled to hear about Jimmy's friendship with Thomas, Ivy quickly became fussed, starkly reminded of how low she had become on Jimmy's list of priorities at the mere mention. Nor was she deaf: she heard the sort of jokes that her coworkers made behind their backs, a frank embarrassment whenever she thought about Jimmy's fizzled interest in her, even when she knew he'd been out on the pull for girls every time he went into the village. So, brazenly, she told him, “Maybe it's to do with the way the pair of you are always out on the defense for one another – like a snotty little club no one else's invited in on.”

“It's slim pickin's,” Jimmy returned unkindly. The sneer on his face looked even more monstrous in the unsteady light. “And the rest of you lot are shite at cards.”

“Well, there's no accounting for taste, is there, Ivy?” said Mr. Bates drolly, somewhat in an effort to stick up for her, but mostly to put Jimmy's attitude in check, as herculean a feat as it might have been to try.

It was starting to turn into a proper argument, with Daisy upset, Mr. Bates and Alfred typically suspicious of Thomas's intentions, and Ivy and Jimmy just short of having their own, personal row over their mismatched interests, while Anna futily did her best to keep the peace. It wasn't long before the squabbling began to garble each point of view as they debated amongst themselves without any real basis for dispute.

“You should know about the hauntin's,” Daisy was insisting to Mr. Bates, pleading with him as though he were her staunch and unleniant father. “Don't you remember durin' the war, when Mr. Barrow and Mrs. O'Brien would talk to 'em for us?”

“Daisy, they were having a go at you,” Mr. Bates sighed, a hint of exasperation finally starting to peek through his usually steady voice. “Neither of them are exactly famous for their _honesty_.”

No one had a chance to get in another word, for the moment Mr. Bates closed his mouth, a sudden burst of angry wind kicked open the back door down the hall and came roaring into the servants' hall, disturbing the bells on the call board and blowing out all of the tapers that burned atop the table before it whipped away into nothingness. Moonshine burned through the windows in the eerie quiet that the wind left in its wake, the creak of the back door's hinges the only sound to be heard.

At once, the feet of Ivy's chair screeched across the floor as she shoved off from the table and stood: “That's it; I'm goin' to bed. This is all too much for the likes of me. So good _night_.” She whirled around in a flurry of skirts and padded heavily out of the room towards the stairs.

“Same for me,” Alfred said quickly as he hurried to follow suit, bumbling after her in a flurry of gangling legs and elbows. His retreating footfalls tapped into nothingness as he disappeared up the steps.

Anna gave Mr. Bates a particular look, and he said with a politeness that counterbalanced the tone he'd taken on just moments before: “I suppose we'll be getting on as well. It's still a bit of a walk home.”

Jimmy said nothing as the Bates couple quietly took their leave, his nose back in his magazine, far more interested in taking himself as far away from Downton as possible with the odd stories it contained. He certainly did enjoy the cultish horror and cosmic mystery that was the theme for most of the magazine, though he wondered how Thomas might have guessed that he would. Jimmy had made being an open, yet unreadable book into a fine art, and he supposed it was a credit to Thomas that he had managed to look through him all the same, even over something as trite as leisure reading. Still, the more _Weird Tales_ he consumed, the more he wondered how much Thomas's selection actually had to do with the alien nature of the writing, or the subtextual allusion to how pithy humans were in the grand scale of the universe, which only seemed terrifying in mankind's inability to fathom it. The latter idea certainly seemed like something Thomas would take a shine to.

The quiet murmurs of Mr. and Mrs. Bates at the end of the hall as they put on their coats had faded into a dull background noise as Jimmy squinted at the page in the poor lighting, barely even noticing the fade of their voices or the click of the back door as they left. It wasn't until the fizzle and burn of a match ignited the room in a brighter glow that Jimmy remembered he wasn't alone. He glanced up to find Daisy leaning over the table as she relit a few of the candles. There was a solemnity to her that reminded Jimmy of someone performing some sort of rite, and, despite himself, he couldn't help thinking that Daisy looked much older than he'd ever remembered her to be in that moment.

Daisy didn't seem to be aware of his vigilance at first, but as she shook out the match, she glanced up with wide eyes that returned her youthfulness. “Don't you want to go to sleep, too?” she wondered, almost as if she was amazed that Jimmy was still there.

Jimmy merely shrugged and went back to reading.

The scrape of a chair being pulled across the flagstone floor echoed throughout the servants' hall, followed by the creak of its wooden frame as Daisy sat down again. “Aren't you afraid of the ghosts, too?” she asked inquisitively.

“Nah,” said Jimmy absently, flicking over a page without even looking up.

“Ta, then!” exclaimed Daisy, sounding much more like her usual self. “Because it don't take Mr. Barrow to know that all that mitherin' really upset 'em.”

At last, Jimmy gave her the benefit of his attention, draping himself over the back of his chair so that the magazine dangled from his hanging fingers as he looked over at her. “Tell me more about it,” he entreated her, swinging the magazine against a chair leg. “About Mr. Barrow and the ghosts and all.”

He was, admittedly, not entirely sold on the prospect, but he was curious about it all the same – or, more specifically, about Thomas and the sorts of whimsies he might have taken a secret fancy after. He supposed it was fitting that someone he'd likely call his best friend would be just as good as he was when it came to playing it close to the vest, and he wondered what sort of hidden aspects his interactions with Daisy might reveal.

“Mr. Barrow says the house is cursed,” Daisy told him as she tucked her dress under her thighs and sat down again. She wasn't wearing her usual bonnet, and her dark hair shone in the unsteady, yellow light. “He's got one of those boards – the ones with the letters and the lens and all. He'll take it out for a full moon, when William and Lady Sibyl and his lieutenant friend are sure to be about.”

“His lieutenant friend?” Jimmy wondered with a scrunched lip, not quite sure why he suddenly felt slighted. “Who's that?”

But Daisy kept on as if she hadn't even heard Jimmy's comment, leaning heavily on the table with an easy familiarity Jimmy instinctively recoiled at. “Did you know anyone who died in the war?” she asked inquisitively, though she spoke as if the question wasn't an incredibly loaded or personal one.

“No one worth mentionin',” Jimmy answered tersely, pointedly flopping the magazine back over his lap to glare blindly the print. The words smeared together as a flickering reel of gritty memories replayed through his mind: mustard gas boils and a friend of his who'd managed to survive having half his face blown off by a stray shell; muddy trenches that filled with sludge nearly as high as the knee, a rifle shuddering in nervous, young hands that had never before held a gun, hands – his own hands – aiming a pistol to the back of another comrade's skull to put him out of his misery, the painful wince as the blood splattered on his face with a deafening bang. Tearing himself from the nightmare, he thought morosely to himself, _I did – it were me who died then, and it's no use tryin' to come back from it._

“It's alright to miss someone, y'know,” Daisy continued on with her stream of consciousness despite Jimmy's silence. Her face was almost comically poised as she peered through the candlelight at him and wondered, “D'ya miss Mr. Barrow?”

At the suggestion, Jimmy prickled nervously – a familiar reaction whenever anyone made such ambiguous remarks to him about Thomas. He might have been quite content with Thomas's close companionship, but the sort of man other people took him for because of it still frightened him almost as much as recalling the war. He flubbed his words even as he made an effort to be as nonchalant as possible: “What? 'Course I do. I mean what d'ya expect? He's me bezzie mate after all, i'nn't he?”

Bobbing her head, Daisy's smile possessed a glow of its own, even in the darkness, though Jimmy didn't see it, his chin still pressed uncomfortably over his pique bowtie as he stared down at the magazine in his lap. His stiff collar cut into the flesh beneath his jaw, but he refused to unfasten it lest he give his awkwardness away.

“He'd be glad to hear it, Mr. Barrow would. I don't think anyone tells him stuff like that very often,” she was saying to him in a way that still managed to win his attention despite his designs to be aloof; “And I can't really understand why everyone else is always so unkind to him, even when he's not anywhere 'round.”

Jimmy's eyes flicked up at her, a flash of something unmentionable banding through his irises: “D'ya really not know why?”

Daisy mushed a cheek into a curled hand, leaning her elbow on the tabletop: “Mrs. Patmore says it's 'cause he were a troubled soul,” she said with a puzzled shrug, iterating the best explanation she could come up with.

“You might say that,” Jimmy muttered, hoping the room was just shadowy enough to hide his expression as he glared at the upright at his side, and then down at its keys. “Don't bother yourself about it. Likely it's why he's got patience for you and all your superstitions.”

To her credit, Daisy was sure there was something Jimmy was in on that she wasn't, and kept fishing for suitable answer from him: “D'ya mean that the others are afraid of Mr. Barrow, too? Like they are of William and all?” At the mention of the dead footman, the little fire diamonds flickering atop the candles surrounding her all waned and jumped in unison, though she hardly took notice of the oddity.

“No, Daisy,” said Jimmy flatly, examining the piano as if there was something to be found in its parts. “Not like William – or whatever.”

“Yeah, well, it sounds to _me_ like everyone just thinks Mr. Barrow's so dark – like he were a ghost, too – but they just don't like what they can't see,” Daisy decided, folding her arms over her chest and cocking her head slightly.

If Jimmy had heard what she had said, he might have actually agreed with her, but he was too distracted by the upright's damper pedal, which he'd noticed was fluctuating in the shadows beneath the keyboard as though it was being operated by an invisible foot. The inexplicable phenomenon was just short of being reasoned out in Jimmy's head as some sort of mechanical flaw, when, completely of its own accord, a single, sustained note resonated from within the upright's wooden frame, sounded by a key that was being held down by no one at all.

A weird chill overtook him, like the pressure had been sucked out of the air around him and replaced with frost, enough so that his breath came out in puffs of steam around his mouth. With abject disbelief, Jimmy could only stare down at the depressed key, at once realizing that he was no longer the only pianist hovering at the ivories.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jimmy starts dreaming unpleasantly.

 

About three hours after Jimmy had casually taken his leave from the servants' hall, wishing Daisy a goodnight as he'd strolled to the stairs like nothing was wrong, Jimmy found himself right back where he started. Except this time, the moonshine had been replaced with the pale blush of first light, and instead of his waistcoat and tie, he was slouched at the table in just his pajamas, glaring at the piano. The ticking of the clock on the wall behind him counted out painfully slow seconds as he desperately strained to keep his eyes open, quite afraid of what he might find if sleep found him once more.

For the most part, Jimmy liked to consider himself a realist: he tended to be calculating and generally pessimistic in his dealings, always assuredly looking out for number one – _himself_ , that is. Such an attitude had a dual impact on his patience for imaginings, often too mired in practicality to stray far from it, while still too unimpressed with his life to want much to do with the actuality of it. It was why he took precautions to tread lightly around Thomas, and why he liked reading strange fiction or enjoying music in his free time; it was why his dreams were never particularly interesting.

Except for that morning.

That morning, Jimmy had dreamed the most lucid, terrifying dream he'd ever endured in his life, horrifying perhaps because it was so _vividly_ familiar, yet wrong and unsettling all the same. He'd rudely awoken on the floor after abruptly falling out of bed, his flattened forelock stuck to his damp brow and his sheets tangled hopelessly around his feet like linen shackles. He'd lingered there on his back, panting in a cold sweat as he stared up at the ceiling of his room as though he didn't recognize it. The dream came rushing back to him across the dull, plaster canvas.

He was in the trenches again, the pop of gunfire filling his ears with a clarity he would never forget. He knew instantly where he was – the exact day, the exact hour, the exact _moment_ – huddled in the dirt next to Lyle Totten, an old schoolmate of his that had been drafted into service at the same time as Jimmy. And though Jimmy had never particularly cared for Totten and his inability to find even black humor in their miserable fortune, he had been the one familiar face that reminded Jimmy of home – that there was somewhere to go once the fighting was through besides an unmarked pine box six feet under.

He'd thought that until that exact day, hour, moment, when a stray artillery shell had gone off just above their heads and collapsed the trench's wooden support structure: Totten had been in the middle of comparing his mother's mince pies to army gruel when he was buried alive. Jimmy saw it all play out again in unrelenting detail, except, where his memory had been filled with French clay and sandbags, it was a shapeless blackness that crushed the life out of Totten with the weight of something tangible. In his dream, Jimmy was narrowly rescued from the same fate by a pair of dark tendrils, shadowy and octopus-like, which slithered around Jimmy's torso and morphed into two dirty, human hands that clamped down against his breast and pulled.

As the hands of his unknown savior fell away, Jimmy turned to find a young man he'd never seen before – for Jimmy had certainly only just scraped by on luck that day in 1916. He had brown hair and earnest eyes, and was dressed in a woolen private's uniform, though there was something unreal about the way the light shifted around him. _William_ , Jimmy somehow knew straight away, despite the fact that he had no idea what the former footman even looked like.

Jimmy opened his mouth to demand the obvious question, but found William and the ruined trench were both gone the moment he'd parted his lips, and that he had been transplanted instead to a very strange, silent place. Somehow, Jimmy was aware that he had also been swallowed up by the shadow, and, as he floated by stars that seemed more like holes than lights, he wondered if this was what it was like to be dead. If it was, it was an alarmingly pleasant sensation.

But the thing that had terrified Jimmy from his sleep had come after an immeasurable length of time amongst the black stars, when he'd come out on the other side of the shadow to find himself mired in the destroyed trench once again. A lifeless, ashen hand protruded from the avalanche of earth and barbed wire – a hand that was split through the middle with a very familiar bullet hole.

Jimmy screamed himself awake.

He'd scrambled out of his room and away from his bed without even bothering to find his dressing gown or slippers, terrified of the prospect that if he fell asleep again, he'd be digging Thomas Barrow's corpse out of that trench, not Lyle Totten's. He found the very idea of it disturbing.

The weird time warp he occupied made the creeping hours impossible to measure, and he barely noticed the stirring of the kitchen staff as they began to descend the staircase around half five. It wasn't until he heard the shrill note of Daisy petulantly snapping an order at Ivy echoing from the kitchen that Jimmy even startled to attention. Snapping out of his restless vigil like a person who'd been unexpectedly knocked out of a sleep-walking daze, he was on his feet – which were bare and numb with cold – and stumbling into the kitchen before he even had a moment to properly orient himself.

“I need to talk to you straight away,” Jimmy blurted as he flew into the room, his mind fixated on William, the former footman, and the unsettling fear that Daisy had been completely right when she'd said that Thomas and she had interacted with his spirit.

He was met with a silence that was decorated only with the blubbering of the tea kettle and the idle clatter of dishware. Mrs. Patmore, Ivy and another pair of maids were all staring at him as though the sight of him was something shocking, while Daisy continued to whisk a flurry of eggs in a bowl as if handsome footmen running around in such a state of undress were an everyday occurrence.

Ivy's gaze flicked around the kitchen, as if in search of someone besides herself that Jimmy might be addressing. Seeing no one, she pointed to herself, wondering with poorly masked hope, “M-Me, Jimmy?”

Jimmy stared at her as though she was stupid.

“D'ya mind savin' your flirtin' for _after_ breakfast, hmm?” Mrs. Patmore snapped at him, her hands on her hips as she moved to stand between Jimmy and the younger girls like some sort of protective barrier.

“I _do_ mind, thanks,” Jimmy hissed without regard for Mrs. Patmore's station, knowing full well that he was out of her jurisdiction. Then: “I need Daisy – and I need her right now.”

“You _cow_ ,” Ivy gasped at Daisy, who was still obliviously beating her eggs, while Mrs. Patmore dryly chuckled over top of her: “Not dressed like _that_ , I don't think.”

It was then that Jimmy comprehended the fact that he really was rather indecent in nary more than his flannels, though he carried on as though it wasn't at all mortifying, even as Ivy's eyes fixed themselves to his person in a particularly uncomfortable way. He leaned heavily on one foot and crossed his arms over his chest contrarily. “Well, I'll tidy up and all,” he said flatly, “but I still need to talk to her. It's _dire_.”

Jimmy's enunciated diction seemed to be enough to finally call up Daisy's attention, and she smiled across the room at him, asking, “Is it about Mr. Barrow?”

Her question was poised so innocently – despite its deadened accuracy – that Jimmy's reaction was stalled, especially after he took a cursory glance around the room and saw the arched eyebrows and stifled grins. “It's about somethin' we talked about last night, alright?” he said vaguely, though it didn't do much in the way of helping the situation, triggering another burst of hushed tittering from the other maids. Frowning, he jerked a thumb over his shoulder, towards the servants' hall, and said, “Just – just be in there when I'm done washin' up, yeah?”

For a reason Jimmy couldn't quite nail down, Daisy seemed excited by the prospect. At once she dropped her whisk and set the bowl down with a ceramic clunk as she begged of Mrs. Patmore, “Oh, please, please, can I? I won't be long, I swear it.”

A smirk turned up the corner of Mrs. Patmore's mouth as she regarded Jimmy, who was shooting her the dirty, half-lidded glower he was so famous for, and her two assistants, who had taken to glowering at each other. She made a note to bring tea to Mrs. Hughes that afternoon so they'd be sure to get enough time to gossip about it. She and Elsie might have been getting on in the years, but didn't mean they'd lost their sense of humor.

Taking a step back, Mrs. Patmore swept a dramatic hand from where Daisy stood to Jimmy's general location, granting her permission with a droll _harumph_ . “It might shock you, but I were in me twenties once, too,” she said to the room at large, and then turned a stern look onto Jimmy, speaking to him with a drop in mirth: “Though you might try puttin' some clothes on first, _James.”_

Jimmy huffed indignantly and turned on his bare heel to stomp back up to the attics, hoping he left with a presence despite the ridiculousness of his rumpled pajamas. He would get this oddity sorted as soon as possible, and everyone else be damned; the last thing he needed was any more disruption if he could help it.

The plus to being up so early was that he could get into the bathroom first. For a decadent fifteen minutes, he sulked in the tub in water that was hot enough to scald his flesh a bright pink before frivolously washing his hair. Suds got into his eyes as he scrubbed and wondered what weird spell Daisy's talk of ghosts and séance-type stuff had cast over him. It was inexplicable, when it came to the nuts and bolts of it, and that was exactly what bothered him. Things that couldn't be explained couldn't be controlled – and God knew that Jimmy Kent did not stand for things he couldn't control.

By the time Jimmy had finished bathing, dressing and preening in front of the mirror, Daisy was waiting for him in the servants' hall. Her eyes were fixed anxiously on the clock when he strolled into the room and pulled out the chair beside hers without ceremony, though she perked up as soon as he sat down. She seemed happy that anyone wanted to listen to her about anything, and Jimmy couldn't help bloating his own ego that her eagerness was rooted in how handsome he was – or nettling Ivy – or _something_ in that area. Vainly, he checked the curl of his forelock (in case it had somehow flopped out of place in the time it had taken him to descend the stairs) with a pair of combing fingers, and bluntly cut to the chase.

“Your William,” he said as he assured the neatness of his hair; “What did he look like? Were he a tall chap with brown hair? Big eyes?”

Daisy had crowded her mouth to one side of her face, her eyebrows knit into an expression that Jimmy was quickly learning was one of consternation. “Why're you askin' for?” she wondered, and for one, horrifying moment, Jimmy panicked that she was reading into his curiosity about another man's appearance – that she wasn't quite so clueless about Mr. Barrow as she'd implied, or that –

“Ev'ryone knows that,” she was saying with a roll of her eyes, a mundane answer that put a thankful lid on Jimmy's worries. He was quick to stow any hint that his mind had gone rocketing into a completely untoward direction about it.

“In case you don't know how it works, bein' in the same war doesn't mean we were automatically bosom buddies or somethin',” Jimmy snapped with unfair terseness, which he immediately regretted when he saw the way Daisy jittered at his tone. Sniffing and making a show of rubbing a finger under his nose, Jimmy awkwardly looked away and tried to make amends: “After all, it were _his_ job I took when I signed on here.”

“William were _second_ footman,” Daisy corrected Jimmy with a finger she tapped against the air. “You've got _Mr. Barrow's_ old job, dummy.”

“No need to be snide,” Jimmy bristled as if he hadn't dished out far worse attitude towards pretty much everyone else on staff. “But about William....”

Daisy brightened as the topic shifted back to her husband. “Mr. Carson keeps a picture of him hangin' in the butler's pantry. Surely you've seen it in there,” she said, popping to her feet like she knew she'd have to show Jimmy what she meant.

Jimmy was ashamed to admit that he hadn't, despite the fact that his job required being in the butler's pantry every day. He followed Daisy as she brazenly led the way down the hall to show him, pushing in through the unlocked door without fear of running into Mr. Carson with Jimmy in tow. In the butler's pantry, the largest silver cabinet was ajar, and Mr. Carson's desk was littered with papers. The ledger was opened to the current date and annotated with a review of the day's planned meals penned out in his looping script – a clear indication that he would be back at any moment. Jimmy anxiously glanced around the room, already working out the excuse he'd give to the elderly butler if he came in and took issue with Daisy's unrequired presence.

“See?” Daisy said, startling Jimmy out of his internal plotting. She was pointing to a small, oval frame on the wall that Jimmy had walked by a thousand times without ever noticing.

He stepped up beside her, crossed his arms and cocked his head to the side as he examined the face smiling back at him through the bubbled glass, certain he'd never seen someone so happy to be in a private's uniform before. Still, there was no disputing the fact that the man he was staring at was the same one that had popped through his dream, and the sheer plainness of it was enough to prickle the hair at the nape of his neck.

“I'll be goddamned,” Jimmy swore under his breath, though Daisy heard him anyway and gasped at him as though he had suddenly sprouted a second head. He ignored her, shaking his head at William's portrait as he tried to reason things out. Surely he had taken notice of the picture before – on a purely subconscious level – and that was how he'd known who William was.

 _Except you didn't bloody know, did you_ , he berated himself, his internal musings made no secret by the scowl on his face. He hated the fact that the weirdest conclusions were the ones that were starting to make the most sense.

Clearly more attuned to other people's misgivings than Jimmy ever was, Daisy blinked at him with worry: “What's wrong, Jimmy? You look like you ate sommat strange.”

Jimmy met her with a look that usually heralded an impertinent comment, though his lips were pursed too tightly to allow any such unpleasantry to escape. When he finally did speak, his voice was a weak semblance of its usual cheek and low, roughened candor. “If it's somethin' strange, it were you who puffed me head up with it,” Jimmy told her flatly, sounding tired. “You'll have to explain to me what you did so we can be sure it stops. I can't be havin' another night like that again, alright?”

“Why? What were wrong with last night?” Daisy queried, again staring at him as though she didn't fully understand what he was saying – which was a good job, Jimmy found himself thinking, because his mind had already perverted her innocuous words without even having to try.

Letting out a long, heavy breath as he flicked his eyes back the portrait of William, Jimmy explained his troubling dream in a slow, vaguely condescending tone: “After all that chat about ghosts and all, I nearly lost me mind dreamin' about the war last night, and I swear to Christ, your William were right there in the thick of it, even though I've never clapped eyes on him until right now.” At this, he indicated the photograph, though he was somewhat uncomfortable with looking directly at it.

At this news Daisy balled her fists and shook them joyfully, flickering back to her merrier persona now that she was a little more clued in on the topic at hand. “Oh! Did you _really_ see him?” she asked, clearly excited. “You must be sensitive to all them spirits – y'know, like Mr. Barrow is.”

“I... I s'pose so,” Jimmy answered carefully, though his mind was inwardly spinning at a mile a minute. There was no denying the elements in his dream, but adding it to talk about being in tune with ghosts, or the furthered implication that Thomas was the authority on any of it – that he was some sort of _spiritual whisperer_ – was a little much to comprehend, especially at just Daisy's word. Frankly, if it weren't for William, none of it would have had a lick of credence, and he desperately fought the urge to yank the frame off the wall, chuck it out the back door as far as he could throw it and just forget the whole thing.

 _Mind the piano. It were always his, y'know – he just lets you borrow it_ , a hauntingly familiar whisper that wasn't his washed beneath his thoughts, unhelpful in its suggestion. He smacked himself in an effort to knock the unwelcome voice out of his head, and Daisy jumped in alarm at the slap of his palm against his cheek. When he found even that didn't do much to help, the most sensible consideration he could conceive in the interim was taking a cricket bat to the old upright and going to town on it if it meant silencing any unwelcome moods – or _spirits_.

Then Jimmy realized he was being absolutely ridiculous.

Another huff shot between his lips and he assuredly put a hand on each hip, speaking to Daisy in a much more cocksure way: “This is complete bollocks,” he told her, shaking his head with a calmness that stemmed from the stinging welt he'd laid on his own face. “Madness, even. Daisy, it's _madness_. Mr. Barrow's havin' a laugh over this, I can assure you.”

Again, Daisy had flip-flopped back to her confused self. “Why'd he do that for?” she demanded to know, crossing her arms and tapping a foot impatiently against the floorboards. “Does he joke with _you_ about it? I know the pair of you joke about a lot of things – and _people_. I've seen ya!”

She seemed proud of herself that she was aware of someone else's business – though it wasn't hard to miss with the way Thomas and Jimmy often parked themselves in the middle of the servants' hall with cigarettes and a deck of cards, while they amused themselves with shamelessly unfiltered commentary about any and everything that passed through.

Jimmy floundered at being caught out so easily. “W-Well, _no_ , not about anythin' like that,” he started to say slowly, until an obvious fact dawned upon him: “But of course he wouldn't do. Why spoil a good joke?”

“'Cause it i'nn't a joke!” Daisy yelped indignantly. “It weren't _ever_ a joke – and Mr. Barrow knows it! And now you know it too!”

“And just since _when_ were Mr. Barrow superstitious, eh?” Jimmy demanded, not for the first time since all this business had begun the night before. He kept the acerbic lilt to his tone; “'Cause if you were tryin' to be funny, then I'd say that were the laugh of the century, Mr. Barrow and all that.”

“Oh, I'm not much at bein' funny. But Mr. Barrow certainly thinks _you_ are,” Daisy said matter-of-factly, once again missing both the conversation's direction and the way her words could be so easily warped once they ran through Jimmy's ears. Her mouth was stretched out into a flat line, like she was just short of being annoyed at Jimmy's contrary attitude, but was unable to really put a finger on why. Instead, she just shrugged, thoughtfully adding, “I think it's nice you can make him laugh – the real sort of laughin', that is. He don't do it much, Mr. Barrow. 'Til you came 'round, anyway.”

“Don't blame 'im. Have you seen the state of this lot he's had to put up with until I turned up? I'm a bloody godsend, me,” Jimmy said self-importantly, relaxing now that the conversation was slowly circulating away from dead William and his weird presence, though it still felt palpable as they loitered in the butler's pantry, seemingly alone.

Almost on cue, as if determined to keep from being forgotten, an odd phenomenon occurred right before Jimmy's eyes as the same, unnatural cold that had descended upon the piano the night before suddenly swept between the pair of them. The convex glass protecting the image of William's face slowly began to take on a thin film of condensation that frosted as it crackled across the surface. Jimmy shivered despite the layers of woolen fabric, linen, and satin that clothed his entire person, the change in temperature a sharp reminder of what had started the whole discussion in the first place. He took a quick glance at Daisy, who didn't seem bothered by the stark drop in temperature in the least, and in fact was standing there as if nothing was out of joint at all.

“But aren't you seein' this, Daisy?” Jimmy asked, unable to take his eyes off the freezing glass. He felt like his heart had also crystallized to ice and was on the verge of dropping straight through him to shatter at his feet.

“Seein' what?” she wondered blithely.

Jimmy was almost bowled over with flabbergast, his eyes searching the room for someone – some _thing_ – to clarify his sanity. Finding none, he could only drop his voice to a harsh whisper, bending low enough to nearly brush noses with the oblivious Daisy: “Alright, you cheeky witch: joke's done; time to have it out. How're you doin' that?”

“Doin' _what_?” Daisy demanded with a lurch in tone, crossing her arms and puffing her cheeks in the best display of frustration she knew how to command.

“Th-This godforsaken _cold_ , dammit,” Jimmy stammered, flinging a hand at William's portrait like it was the most obvious thing in the world. The frame was starting to hang with tiny, frozen dribbles along its bottom curve, and Jimmy's breath was coming out in steamy clouds again when he spoke.

Clarity suddenly cast itself across Daisy's face as her lips rounded into a darling little 'O' shape as a hum of understanding whistled through them. Her mouth opened as if to say something – something Jimmy anticipated might finally clear things up and return him to peace – but she never got a chance to speak, for just then, the door swung open to reveal Mr. Carson, and he didn't look at all pleased to see either of them there.

“What is the meaning of this, James?” he asked with authoritative seriousness as he glanced back and forth between the pair of them. Somehow, it was very clear to Jimmy that Mr. Carson had already assigned any blame to be had entirely on his head – as _usual_. Without Thomas around, Mr. Carson had been quick to fall back on his old preference for Alfred, and though Jimmy might have been first footman, he certainly didn't _feel_ like he was most of the time.

Still, Jimmy was ready to go down swinging with all the dirty excuses he could think of – or even the ridiculous ones. He whipped back around to William's portrait, and was bothered to find it just as it had always been: somewhat dusty and weathered, and completely devoid of any of the wintery elements he had so surely seen coat it mere seconds before. Despite that, Jimmy's skin was still rough with gooseflesh, and he swore his breath was still fogged with the chill that continued to hang about them like a damp shroud.

“James, is there a _reason_ you've lured poor Daisy in here alone?” Mr. Carson was asking without subtlety to his meaning.

“Is there a reason you're _askin'_?” Jimmy shot back with a complete lack of decorum, forgetting himself.

Clearly not about to go into the sordid details of any such suggestion, Mr. Carson cleared his throat, his bushy eyebrows jumping up in offense as he folded his hands genially behind his back. “Now, I know you're used to certain... _advantages_ , shall we say, whilst Mr. Barrow is underfoot,” he started to say with his usual breed of careful tact, “but you'll find that he is still well and far away, so it would be much appreciated, _James_ , if you could find it in yourself to carry on by the same rules as the rest of us – at least for propriety's sake. Or the _illusion_ of it, for the love of God.” He was shaking his head hand holding his hands up like he was trying to wash them of anything unseemly that might have taken place there, completely missing the way Jimmy was rolling his eyes.

“I were just tellin' Jimmy about our William,” Daisy piped up informatively, gesturing towards William's portrait with a fond smile. “He were curious what he looked like.”

An internal battle flickered across Mr. Carson's stern features, like he was fighting desperately to swallow a comment best saved for other ears. His voice was tight as he sufficed with a mere: “I'm sure.” He still didn't look entirely convinced.

“Anyway, we were just gettin' on, Mr. Carson, honest,” Daisy continued, who had started anxiously tapping her fingertips together as if she weren't sure quite what to do when faced by Mr. Carson's brand of discipline. She looked to Jimmy for help, but he only mouthed the word, “ _Later_ ,” at her before sweeping out of the room with the grace of an ornery peacock without a care for anyone. He made sure to brush by Mr. Carson without even gracing him with a look.

But despite the illusion of such confidence, as he stalked back towards the kitchen, the only thing Jimmy could focus on was the unending irritation that all he'd won for his trouble were more questions than he'd started with, and Mr. Carson breathing down his neck for the rest of the day.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to mention, thanks again to the lovely CosmicZombie for her beta reading powers as usual <3
> 
> And thanks to anyone who read through this! Appreciate everyone who's taken a gamble on this crazy thing, haha.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas has an appointment on the Lower East Side.

 

Thomas Barrow was bored.

No.

Thomas Barrow was _agitated_.

More exactly, he was agitated because he was bored, and bored because he was agitated. Not for the first time in the last ten minutes, he pulled out his pocket watch and frowned at each innocuous tick that pulsated in his hand before he shoved it back into his waistcoat. He moved to the bureau by the window, which supported a decanter of bootleg gin – a real mark of the sort New York establishments he frequented – and measured out another finger of the stuff. Then he sat down at the writing desk on the other side of the shabby little hotel room and glanced around at its peeling wallpaper and scuffed furnishings. He swallowed the gin and winced at the burn; he looked at his watch; he got up again.

Pouring himself yet another helping of the cloudy liquor, he relocated to the room's other window – the one that squinted out over St. Mark's Place down below. Yellowed lace curtains flapped around him as he stared at the rugged cobbles that served as an American excuse for a street and voyeuristically spied upon the passersby as they came and went. Two women in corsets, lace and beads, and not much else strutted along the way, while a man across the road loitered nervously outside a door Thomas knew to mask an opium den. A vagrant occupied the stoop of a nearby boarding house, drunk, loaded or both. The Lower East Side wasn't exactly famous for its repute, but it certainly held appeal for him – at least for the sort of dealings he had any interest in.

Then he remembered why he was there and why he was agitated and bored once more. He knocked back the gin and took another glance at his pocket watch. It was getting on three o'clock, and his appointment was grossly tardy. At the current rate, he'd have to kick off on the whole thing if he was to be back uptown in time to dress His Lordship for dinner, much as he would have preferred not to. How he so hated wasting time.

Mere moments later, a hollow knock clacked against the door. Flinging the empty lowball glass onto the bureau on his way to answer the call. He wrenched the door open to find a young man in shirtsleeves, a beat-up jacket draped over one arm and a newsboy hat dangling from a pair of fingers. Thomas looked him up and down with a discerning eye, taking in his wavy, sienna hair and thin lips, and then said by way of greeting, “I were expectin' a blond.”

The man shrugged and strode through the door, which Thomas still held open despite his critique of the other man's appearance. “Beggars ain't got room to be choosers, dollface,” he replied with a thick, Yankee brogue as he gave Thomas a similarly critical once-over. He spoke like someone aged well beyond his years, though he looked to be a fraction of Thomas's age.

“Bad enough you're late: it doesn't thrill me you've turned up a liar, too,” Thomas said flatly, though he still closed the door behind his visitor like he meant for him to stay despite such annoyances.

“You want I should go, then?” the man asked, even as he unloaded his jacket and cap onto the tattered armchair sitting in the corner of the room.

Thomas was pouring more gin, a glass for each of them. He handed one of them to his guest, saying, “What d'ya think?”

“I'll take that as a no,” said the young man, accepting the glass and raising it to Thomas before downing it all in one go. Then he gave Thomas a more scrutinizing stare, a frown dancing across his face. “What's that accent you got there? It ain't Irish, is it?” he asked obtusely, setting his glass down with a rather heavy-handed thud. “'Cause I don't fuck micks. Gotta have some standards in the place.”

Thomas recoiled with disdain, his fingers gripping his own glass tight enough to threaten crushing it. Even after being in the States as long as he had, he still had yet to get used to the unabashed openness Americans had about their prejudices. At least the British had the sense to keep that sort of thing under their hats.

Swallowing the rest of the gin in his glass, he hissed around its alcoholic fire: “I'm English, thank you.” He flung the glass across the bureau, where it slid across the wooden surface until it slammed into the other tumbler with a rough clink. Then he started to unknot his tie with an abrupt command for his guest: “Now let's get to it; I'm on a bit of a schedule.”

The young man didn't immediately follow suit, though he hooked his thumbs around his suspenders like he meant to shuck them over his shoulders at a moment's notice. “You payin' for the whole nine yards?” he wanted to know, eyes narrowed. “I may be lavender, but I ain't a moron.”

“You'll get it when I'm satisfied, you snide git,” Thomas growled, already unfastening his collar stud and the buttons of his waistcoat. It was strange, he thought, how easy it was to find men willing to accommodate his particular _tastes_ for the right price. He supposed that was what Americans kept lauding as capitalism and entrepreneurship, in which case, Thomas would be the first to sing the country's praises back home. In the brief time since he and Lord Grantham had arrived in New York, Thomas had seen more action than he had in the better part of four years – though perhaps the sudden manifestation of Jimmy Kent during that time hadn't been particularly helpful on that score, either. On that fateful day in 1920, Thomas's prowling instinct had died the second the blond had come strolling into the kitchen looking for a job.

Abroad, he'd done his best to put Jimmy out of mind, though it was nearly impossible despite his best efforts. Even when the boys he hired ended up looking nothing like Jimmy, he'd always end up finding some way to liken them to the footman that had ruthlessly eaten his entire being with just a little wink. For instance, the brown-haired boy that was currently undressing before him might not have shared many physical features with Jimmy, but goddamn if the foul attitude he had didn't make up for it, shooting straight to Thomas's cock and pinging his unbeating heart along the way.

Before long, Thomas was perched on the edge of the room's creaky little bed, his trousers around his legs, his linen shirt hanging loosely around his forearms as he held the brown-haired youth's head between his thighs and thrust into his mouth wantonly. The boy was a bit clumsy in his technique, despite his big talk, but Thomas found erotic anyway, easily able to imagine his lovely Jimmy just as uncertain with his first try at such things if he were ever to find his way to Thomas's bed – a scenario Thomas had shamelessly played out in his head again and again over the years. When Thomas came, his lips fell apart in pleasure, and a moan stretched Jimmy's name across his tongue as he held the young man's head still with a handful of brown hair.

The boy sat back on his haunches and wiped Thomas's cum from the corner of his mouth as he smirked up at the dark-haired underbutler slyly. “Jimmy, huh?” he said with a wry snort; “That who you think about when you fuck your missus?”

Thomas's shoulders quaked as he caught his breath, though the glower he flung at the young prostitute was on point: “Do I really come off like the sort of bloke to be interested in that?”

The brown-haired youth hummed with understandings: “Other way 'round, huh. Ain't it a bitch.” As he spoke, the young man was sitting on the floor, ungracefully rolling his trousers off his legs with the haste of someone who had better places to be. He shimmied out of the woolen garment and started to unlace his skivvies, flashing Thomas a smirk that completely disarmed the dark-haired underbutler in its stark familiarity.

Thomas managed to recover quickly and fixed a displeased expression on his face, even as the boy got to his feet, now completely naked except for that salacious smirk. The young man approached Thomas again, ready to take their encounter to the next phase as he slid his arms around Thomas's neck and touched their foreheads together. “But I don't mind if you like callin' me _Jimmy_ ,” the prostitute suggested huskily; “Whatever floats your boat, buddy.”

However, Thomas was far from impressed by such talk, and he gave the young man an unexpected push. “I don't appreciate your nerve,” Thomas spat tersely. He might have been struggling personally to separate his yearning for Jimmy from his sexual gallivanting, but he was inflamed to hear someone – hooker or otherwise – speak as though he could be such an easy replacement for the blond footman. Thomas knew full well that even beyond the burnt out stars at the end of the universe, there was no one who would ever fill Jimmy's shoes, and it remained a great mystery to him how Jimmy, even when he was thousands of miles off, could make him so happy and so miserable at the same time.

“Hey, what gives?” the boy reeled as he stumbled backwards, surprised at Thomas's sudden lack of enthusiasm for the game. “Ain't you in the mood?”

A nameless flicker seared in the gray of Thomas's irises, dangerous even as he remained perfectly still on the edge of the mattress. “Keep your nose out of me personal business,” Thomas ground out between clenched teeth, his nails digging into his pinstriped trousers; “Last I checked, two-bit advice weren't your _job_.”

That particular comment managed to strike a nerve with the prostitute, who at once bent to snatch his drawers off the floor. He stepped into them and yanked them up to his hips with jerky motions, rejoining tartly, “You talk pretty high 'n' mighty for a paddy faggot payin' to get his johnson sucked in a downtown flophouse, dollface.”

“And _you_ talk a lot for the one who were s'posed to be doin' the _suckin'_ ,” Thomas snapped in a rare moment of crudeness, a clear testament to how bothered he'd become. He was already pulling his shirt back over his shoulders, shoving the long tails beneath the waistband of his trousers, buttoning himself back in. He didn't have a mind to sit around and have some hooker remind him that even if he lived a thousand lifetimes, the closest he'd ever get to Jimmy was with a fantasy kept in his wallet.

As he was laying his tie underneath his collar and fixing it back to his shirt in front of the dirty mirror over the bureau, he realized the boy was still standing behind him, waiting expectantly. “Yes?” Thomas asked acerbically, addressing the young man's reflection as he pressed the front collar stud through its loop with a tense pinch of his fingers. He began to redo his tie into a half-Windsor knot.

“You ain't paid up, mickey,” the young man said, crossing his arms over his unfastened waistcoat.

“You've not earned a wage,” Thomas answered, who was presently more annoyed with the fact that he'd done his tie unevenly and had to start over.

“Like fun,” said the young man without budging.

The fabric of Thomas's tie hissed as he sharply pulled the knot to his throat and turned around, casting his judgment down his cheeks at the boy with an unflinching frown. “Your sort's a dime a dozen,” he said flatly, “but you're not worth a penny.” He flicked his chin at the door, adding, “Now get – or d'ya want me to leave you saddled with the room, too.”

It quickly became apparent that Thomas was not one to be trifled with, and, conceding defeat, the young man angrily stalked to the armchair where he'd left his outerwear and snatched it up. He slammed the door so harshly upon his exit, it actually popped back open, and Thomas curled his lip with a hint of dark satisfaction to see him leave in such a state. Truly, he _loathed_ wasting time.

Once he'd finished dressing, Thomas put on his fedora and overcoat, and plucked up his umbrella on his way out, hooking its crooked handle over his wrist. He haggled down the rate for the two hours he'd lost in the slummy hotel room and then walked outside, immediately assailed by the clamoring din of lower Manhattan. He was on the corner of St. Mark's and Third Avenue, a good ninety blocks from the Levinson house uptown, and let out a sigh, not needing to check his watch to know that he'd have to start heading for the IRT if he was ever going to make it back in time to help his Lordship with his evening wear. Lord Grantham might have had his hands a bit too full with family matters to mind where Thomas got off to in between hours, but Robert Crawley would be damned before he'd allow himself to be late for dinner.

On his way to the Astor Place station, he couldn't help but stop for a fresh pack of cigarettes at a little tobacconist he happened to pass by. A tuneless jangle announced his entrance into the small shop, which was being overseen by a bored-looking man who acted as though his greatest excitement that day was Thomas's patronage. With a few extra dollars to spend after the disappointment with the prostitute, Thomas found himself perusing a magazine rack near the counter in search of something to read on the train, though he inevitably found himself flipping through a pulp rag with Jimmy in mind instead.

The magazine in hand was another edition of _Weird Tales_ he'd produced from the back of the magazine rack, obscured behind more popular publications like _Harper's Bazaar_ and _Collier's Weekly_. In the one letter he had sent to Thomas, Jimmy had written his undying praise for the magazines Thomas had sent him, which was followed by a rare string of profuse thanks from the blond footman. It had pleased Thomas immensely to think that he'd managed to push in a bit closer to the object of his affection by discovering that Jimmy held fascination for such things, and he couldn't help the bead of hope that pulsated within his breast as he turned the magazine's pages, reading snatches of the stories here and there as he went:

“ _When Randolph Carter was thirty he lost the key of the gate of dreams. Prior to that time he had made up for the prosiness of life by nightly excursions to strange and ancient cities beyond space, and lovely, unbelievable garden lands across ethereal seas; but as middle age hardened upon him he felt those liberties slipping away little by little, until at last he was cut off altogether. No more could his galleys sail up the river Oukranos past the gilded spires of Thran, or his elephant caravans tramp through perfumed jungles in Kled, where forgotten palaces with veined ivory columns sleep lovely and unbroken under the moon.”_

Thomas nodded in approval as he read and closed the magazine, too distracted by his selection for Jimmy to remember choosing one for himself – preferring anyway to take a proper look at _Weird Tales_ before he sent it back to Downton. He brought it to the counter, and then hemmed and hawed over which brand of American cigarettes he ought to try next. As he deliberated, the clerk blinked down at the magazine like he was surprised by Thomas's pick.

“Takes all kinds, don't it,” he commented just as Thomas settled on an attractively branded packet of Chesterfields and indicated it with a discerning finger. The clerk retrieved them from the shelf behind the counter and dropped them on top of _Weird Tales_ without grace. He rapped the pack idly as he rang up Thomas's purchase on a large, brass cash register that chimed merrily with each depression of its keys.

“All kinds for _what_?” Thomas asked warily, not about to let anyone start in on him over his proclivities – especially after the day he'd just had. His movements were jerky as he produced his wallet and fished out a crisply folded fiver.

The cashier's hand clamped down on the cigarettes, which he then picked up and started to tap against the typography that exclaimed _Weird Tales_ across the magazine's cover. “You know, _this_ lot,” the man said emphatically, as if the gesture was elaboration enough. He made a pensive face, adding, “Guess I thought all youse wouldn't wander up from Brooklyn too much, but it's a big town – and here you are.”

Thomas slapped the five dollar bill onto the counter, his face still tight and not quite sure what the young man was trying to get at. “You've a store in _this_ neighborhood and I'm somehow _shockin'_ to you?” he spat with mocking derision. His patience was worn rather thin, which just made it all the more grating when the clerk started to laugh at him.

“Oh, _that_? Knew _that_ the minute you strolled in, Dapper Dan,” the cashier said as his chuckles abated into what Thomas could have sworn was a rather suggestive expression. He continued to eye Thomas in such a way, even as his fingers drummed against the magazine and the topic shifted back to his original meaning: “I was referrin' to all youse who manage to dig these wild magazines out. You ain't one of those guys that talk like there's somethin' to all this sorta stuff, are ya? There's a whole lot of 'em in Brooklyn, like I told ya; I heard they worship the sea.”

“Do they now?” Thomas wondered with a quirked eyebrow as a sense of relief settled in. With as strange a life as his had been, he was far more at ease thinking about dark urban legends than the social nonacceptance of his natural inclinations. New York was new to him, and so were its haunts, but that didn't mean that Thomas was ambivalent about the strangeness that lived in the shadows between life and death. He preferred the way he dead didn't judge: the dead didn't think he was _weird_.

“Sure. It's a real freak show, I'm sayin',” said the cashier, who seemed pleased to have someone to talk to – though Thomas got the distinct impression the longer he went on that he was being shamelessly flirted with. _Perhaps the day is about to take an up swing_ , he thought placidly as he listened, suddenly no longer bothered whether or not Lord Grantham would have someone to help him tuck in his shirttails.

The cashier spun Thomas a good story, relaying a trip he took out to Coney Island late one night. “Saw it with my own eyes the last time I went down there,” the clerk began in a low, ambient voice. “Way out in the water, they have some evil rite they perform. You couldn't've seen it from the boardwalk, but I was stuck at the top of the Wonder Wheel, just swingin' there with nothin' to look at but the waves. And I saw 'em – saw 'em standin' in a circle, up to their necks in water, chantin'. I watched 'em drown somebody, swear to God.”

Thomas snorted, amused, as he took his change from the cashier, carefully tucking it into his wallet before returning it to his pocket. “ _Drown_ somebody?” he asked with an incredulous expression. “That sounds like a tall tale.”

“Believe what you like,” shrugged the clerk, crossing his arms. He was looking at Thomas in a particularly expectant way.

“I s'pose you'll want to convince me,” said Thomas, his tongue subtly tracing the cut of his teeth behind his lips, now more than positive that he wasn't reading the situation wrong.

“Guess you'll have to take a load off in the back while I do,” replied the cashier as he lifted the hinged section of the counter that allowed a person access between the two sections of the store.

Thomas didn't need another invitation. He waited for the clerk to lock the front door and hang a ' _Back in Thirty Minutes'_ sign in the window. He left his umbrella and fedora with his cigarettes and _Weird Tales_ on the counter, and followed the other man to the stock room. He decided would just tell Lord Grantham that he'd been trapped on a stalled subway train with nothing to be done about it.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The blurb Thomas reads in Weird Tales is from the Lovecraft story 'The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath'. I suppose I should also mention the story that Jimmy was reading in Chapter one was, of course, 'The Call of Cthulu', also by Lovecraft. 
> 
> I'm sorry for missing last week; term has started for both me and my beta and we're both running around a bit crazy! I will do my best to keep up the regular postings! (Next week I am being considered for my thesis candidacy and I'm kind of freaking out super hardcore.)
> 
> Anyway, cheers! Hope you enjoyed the first of many weird Thomas chapters ;D


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daisy and Jimmy push into Mr. Barrow's room in search of clues.

 

Jimmy's “Later” occurred a few days after the incident in the butler's pantry. It wasn't long after supper, around the time Daisy usually oversaw the evening cleanup of the kitchen, barking out orders to Ivy and the the other maids with aspirations for Mrs. Patmore's distinctive panache.

As usual, the day had been packed with an unending parade of work, which could be sort of satisfying at best, but normally just mindless and confusing. Any enjoyment Daisy derived from her job was usually found whenever Alfred was about, not only because she couldn't help fancying him, but also because Alfred actually  _ liked  _ cooking, and watching him in the kitchen always felt magical to her. Unfortunately, such moments were usually spoiled by the fact that Alfred only ever stepped behind the stove if Ivy seemed to be struggling with something, a gross reality check Daisy wished she could ignore more easily. It only annoyed her more when she thought of how she had been expected to negotiate the same learning curve without help from anyone at all. It sometimes felt like a cosmic joke played at her expense.

In the meantime, even if it was in the most minor of fashions, at least she could take out her frustrations with the small ounce of seniority she held over Ivy. It was a little disheartening that the best part of her day was usually this: standing at the end of the butcher's block, where Mrs. Patmore usually did, she would oversee Ivy and the other two maids who helped in the kitchen in that last clean-up of the day. She liked that Mrs. Patmore actually  _ approved  _ of such leadership, though it was difficult not to bombast Ivy with the brunt of the work without being too obvious. Not that she particularly  _ minded _ if she was.

She could hear the dregs of the staff starting to turn in for the night. Naturally, she was always particularly tuned in to Alfred's voice as he protested loudly at Jimmy, who had probably swindled him at cards again. She wished she knew enough about twenty-one to be able to help Alfred on that score, but it was really only because Mr. Barrow had wryly pointed it out to her that she was even aware of it. She wondered if Jimmy ever beat Mr. Barrow at cards, or if Mr. Barrow would let him win, since he'd called Jimmy a cheat like it was a  _ compliment _ .

Whatever transpired in the servants' hall resulted in Alfred leaving Jimmy with a very curt, “ _ Goodnight _ ,” his footsteps quick and measured as he trotted up the stairs to the attics. Then, almost as if it were clockwork, another  _ tock-tock _ of shoes against the floor approached the kitchen at a more languid gait, heralding the appearance of Jimmy Kent, who swept purposefully into the room and leaned against the wall like he owned it. Unsurprisingly, Ivy and the other two maids perked up as if they'd suddenly been shoved on stage, though they also started fumbling their chores as though they'd simultaneously forgotten their lines, well-rehearsed as they might have been.

“Don't stop for me,” Jimmy said, the faint smirk he nearly always wore quirking the corner of his lips as he watched Ivy scrub the bottom of same pot for almost five minutes; “I just wanted to see what the crack was.” He spoke as if he was addressing the room at large, but his eyes flicked to Daisy.

“I dunno why. Nothin' out of the ordinary here – just the same as ev'ry night,” Daisy sniffed, pumping up her authority. She always thought it was obvious when Jimmy was bored, and this time was no different. With luck, she'd find a way to make Ivy look foolish in front of him; she was still incredibly angry with her for hopping to Alfred just because Jimmy had dropped her.

“Yeah, but it's not every night you always got somethin' worth, uh... _chattin' about_ ,” answered Jimmy, who was trying to implicate the supernatural encounter he and Daisy had in the butler's pantry without looking like a loon in front of the other girls. Unfortunately for him, he only managed to come off as a flirt – as was typical and expected of him.

“If you've somethin' to say to me, you can say it in front of the others,” Ivy announced, swinging the saucepan she'd been scouring into the sink with a bit too much gusto; soapy droplets of water flew off its copper body and spritzed her in the eye, causing her to wince.

“Why're you always so  _ sure  _ it's got anythin' to do with you?” Jimmy shot back argumentatively. “S'not like you're the last beautiful girl in the world, y'know.”

One of the other maids sniggered, and Daisy let it slide, perfectly content to let Ivy embarrass herself further. She had no idea why they'd fallen out, though Ivy had taken pains to let everyone within a ten mile radius of Downton know that Jimmy wasn't the charming prince he often pretended to be. Daisy liked thinking about the way Mrs. Patmore rolled her eyes whenever the topic came up.

“Besides,” Jimmy was continuing with a cheeky toss of his head, “maybe it's nowt to do with any of that sort of stuff. Just  _ maybe _ I've got other pursuits instead.” 

The other two maids exchanged a look that Daisy missed, though when they started to titter, she whipped around to glare at them with what she hoped was a good impersonation of Mrs. Patmore's stern glare. Jimmy didn't seem to particularly appreciate their amusement and crossed his arms with a rather childish pout, muttering just loud enough for everyone to hear: “I  _ meant  _ that me life don't need to be ruled by which bird I'm takin' 'round on me arm. I could have one for every day of the week if I wanted.”

“I'd not be surprised to hear you do,” Ivy snapped at the mountain of pots that filled the kitchen sink. She clutched the dish towel she held with a white-knuckled grip.

“Can I be one?” asked one of the other maids with a giggle, which intensified when the other maid leaned in to whisper something untoward about Mr. Barrow to her friend. Just within earshot of the pair, Daisy glared at them again, groping for a spoon to shake at them in true Mrs. Patmore style, though the effort was wasted as she tried to puzzle out why they'd relate him to the present topic at hand. _Mr. Barrow's hardly a girl_ , she thought with a loud, obtuse sigh; _And not a ladies man, neither – don't they know?_

But Jimmy was already having his fun, clearly not above winding Ivy up in the name of retaliation. “Of course you can,” he bantered back with a wink. Then he flicked a finger at the other maid, adding, “You can be Thursdays, and Daisy, you'll be me Friday girl.”

“What?” At the mention of her name, Daisy's attention suddenly snapped back to Jimmy, unsure what had called it up, or why the other three were suddenly looking at her so intently. In particular, Ivy looked like she wanted to climb over the butcher's block and beat her bloody with the skillet she had just removed from the sink, though Daisy couldn't be entirely sure why. When a few moments continued on without a word from anyone, Daisy repeated herself in a more urgent tone: “ _What_?”

Jimmy was staring at her like there was no one else in the room, his expression a mess of contradicting emotions. “You,” he said again, his voice tight like he was trying to keep himself from slipping and admitting something else entirely; “You want to be me Friday night girl, Daisy?”

“Why would I want that?” she asked, her brow creased with confusion. She thought it was perfectly apparent that the only boy for her was tall and ginger and called Alfred.

“Why _wouldn't_ you want that?” asked one of the other girls, a question which sent her and her companion into yet another round of uncontrolled giggling.

“Well, _I_ can think of a few choice reasons,” Ivy put in – though if she meant to sound nonchalant, she was doing a piss poor job at it. It was apparent that no matter what Jimmy had done to offend her, she didn't like the fact that he had managed to wrangle control over the situation by making it abundantly clear that he wasn't bothered about it. Daisy couldn't help but find a little poetic justice in the whole matter: Ivy might have been used to playing that card herself, but she certainly didn't know how to handle it when the tables were turned.

“Then it's a good job you ain't on me list anymore, eh?” Jimmy shot back at her, unperturbed by how churlish he was being. Then, putting her out of mind as if all it took was a blink, he looked back to Daisy and entreated her, “So? What d'ya say, Daisy? Be me girl tonight?”

“Oh, I s'pose it _is_ a Friday,” the Thursday night maid commented with a snap of her fingers. She clearly was having a rip-roaring time with the whole affair, her amusement nearly unstoppable now that Daisy had become too distracted to cut her off.

At first, Daisy's expression was tight and twinged with uncertainty, but as she glanced around the kitchen and settled on Ivy, who was still brandishing the skillet like she meant to do Daisy harm, an image of Alfred popped into her head. In her mind's eye, she could see him so clearly, his gangling frame hunched over the range of steaming pots as he lifted a spoon to his lips to taste. It would have been a pleasing thought except for how easily it was ruined by Ivy, who had stepped in and dragged Alfred away like a dog on a collar the moment she'd lost Jimmy. Daisy didn't suppose that Ivy found Alfred's love of food particularly charming – at least, not in any way she could discern – and it embittered her royally that Ivy had captured Alfred's attention without the slightest care for him as a person.

So, swallowing her nerves, Daisy snatched up the wooden spoon lying on the counter in front of her and clutched it like a talisman for luck as she agreed: “I s'pose I might do, Jimmy. Why not?”

“That's the ticket,” he grinned. Impatiently, he tossed his head towards the hallway and cleared his throat; “Now why don't you let this lot do their job, while you and me have a little _catch up_ , eh?”

A weird prickle Daisy quickly recognized as confidence pulsed through her chest as she locked eyes with Ivy's envious stare. She tapped the spoon against her palm and kept her focus trained on the other assistant cook as she said flatly, “Yeah, alright. Let's.” Then she wagged the spoon vaguely around the room and gave the order, setting up her terms: “Don't go slackin' on account of me bein' gone.”

The confidence continued to boil within Daisy as she followed Jimmy into the hall, though she had to catch a bit of her lip between her teeth to keep from looking back over her shoulder, where she knew Ivy's glowering eyes were boring twin holes into back as she went. In a way, it was almost a relief to slip into the relative darkness of the hallway, where only a few essential lights had been left on and bathed it in a golden-pink that buzzed softly with electricity. Jimmy led the way to the foot of the stairs. He paused with one foot tilted against the cut of the bottom step, a spindly hand alighting the post as he waited for Daisy to catch up.

“Where're you goin'?” she wanted to know when it dawned upon her that Jimmy didn't mean to linger downstairs.

“Where's it look like?” Jimmy answered, pursing his lips impatiently and lifting a sharp eyebrow at her. When he got only a blank stare in response, he let out a dramatic sigh and elaborated, “Somewhere we can be _alone_. Naturally.”

A rush of understanding overwhelmed Daisy, quickly snuffing out any self-assured airs she might have still kept. Others might have pegged her as daft, but Daisy had picked up a thing or two as Mrs. Patmore's right-hand assistant, the most important of which was that boys never said what they meant to. She had been all for having a go at Ivy, but it seemed like she'd been wrong to assume that it was going to end there. Jimmy had a  _ reputation,  _ as Mrs. Patmore liked to say – one he wouldn't let anyone forget until he rolled over dead; “Lest we get the wrong  _ idea _ ,” Mrs. Patmore would often add with a sarcastic edge that still eluded Daisy. To her, with the easy way he spat out his charms, Daisy mostly wondered if Jimmy even realized what he was doing half the time.

“Well? Let's get on, shall we? I haven't got all night,” Jimmy urged in a tone that starkly contrasted the slick creature Daisy was currently picturing the blond footman as. She startled abruptly at his curtness.

Alfred flickered through Daisy's head again, his lopsided smile and rosy cheeks enough of an inspiration to regain some of her previous strength. “Y'know I'm interested in someone else, yeah?” she said, avoiding Jimmy's rather unseemly stare – an ugly expression that acutely defined why no one stood up to him very often. “And I'm not that kind of girl. I thought you were just windin' Ivy up.”

The last thing Daisy expected was for Jimmy to laugh. It wasn't the unkind sort of chortling that often clogged his throat, but a surprisingly bemused one instead. He tugged at his cuffs, which were hanging loose and unclasped around his wrists, and smiled darkly, “Trust me, if I were tryin' to have me way with you, you'd  _ know.”  _ He then threw her a wink anyway – which Daisy was sure he probably couldn't help – and chided wryly, “But don't give the game away, right? Common enemies make common friends and all, and you _ do  _ want Alfred to notice you, don't you?”

The flush that rocketed up from Daisy's toes and steamed out her ears thrust the temperature around her up several degrees, and continued to climb as Jimmy started to laugh again. “S-So what if I do?” Daisy tried to say, though her voice trembled in time with her shaking fists.

“ _So_ ,” Jimmy intoned, gripping the banister so that he could hang off the stairs and lean into her, “if you help me, then I'll help _you_.”

Jimmy's nose was a scant few centimeters from Daisy's, and an audible swallow dropped down her neck as the crisp blue of his irises sizzled in in the artificial gloaming. She could actually hear him breathing, though the air that pushed through his lips was icy. “I-I'm not quite sure how you mean,” she stammered nervously, growing very anxious at Jimmy's proximity.

“Don't get cute; y'know exactly what I mean,” Jimmy snorted, drawing away to lean against the balustrade post, much to Daisy's relief. “Alfred ain't exactly a genius; he could do with some _persuadin'_. And me...” At this, he looked away, like there was something else in the empty hallway that he was trying to catch desperate glimpse of. His persona became incredibly conspiratorial as he finished his sentence with an uncharacteristic warble: “Me – I've got to get me a good night's rest, or I'm goin' to die.”

For a few moments, all Daisy could find the steam to do was blink at Jimmy, uncertain why he'd be so secretive about sleep troubles. When her faculties slowly began to whir on once again, she managed to crinkle her brow, carefully advising, “Tea's always the best way to settle down if you can't sleep, Jimmy.”

“Y'think I haven't already tried that – and about a hundred other things, while I were at it? It ain't me first walk 'round the bend, y'know,” Jimmy snapped, his fingers curling around the banister so firmly, the bones in his hand stood up, stretching his flesh over the skeletal ridges. “But I ain't slept in three days, so no, I don't think tea's really cuttin' it.”

Daisy returned to her earlier pearl of wisdom about boys and their inability to be honest, and frowned suspiciously at Jimmy. “Right, so if tea don't help,” she said, still speaking cautiously as she tried to puzzle it all out, “then why're you so sure I know somethin' else better?”

“ _Because_ you're the only one who –” Jimmy cut himself off halfway through his thought, deciding even his dullest whisper was still too loud for the admission he was about to impart. Without warning, he grabbed a handful of Daisy's sleeve and pulled her close so that he could speak into her ear: “You're the only one who wouldn't think I were completely _mad_ if I said I were bein' _haunted_.”

A shiver ran through Daisy as Jimmy's cold breath pillowed against her cheek, her mouth shaped like she meant to hum in understanding. But just as the air was beginning to whistle through her lips, a shrill gasp echoed from the other end of the hall. Jimmy's chin snapped up and Daisy became rigid as a child who'd been caught with her hand in the proverbial biscuit jar: it wasn't hard for either of them to recognize the sound of Ivy's malcontent at catching them juxtaposed as they were.

“You manky trollop!” Ivy huffed, spinning on her heel to stomp back into the kitchen. Jimmy laughed at her as she went – the unkind variety, Daisy noted.

“Well, that worked out well,” Jimmy appraised, looking particularly pleased with himself. Then, tossing out the distraction of Ivy as easily as a piece of rubbish, he drummed his hands on the railing and then turned to start climbing the steps: “Now, come on. I need your help breakin' into Mr. Barrow's room.”

“You need me help to _what?”_ Daisy echoed after Jimmy, who was already halfway up the staircase. She hitched up her apron and skirts to dash after him, determined to get a better answer out of him. “Jimmy, that's a _mad_ idea,” she protested as she took the stairs two at a time with labored, nonathletic gasps.

Her particular word choice at least managed to still Jimmy's quick trotting at the top of the flight. He waited for her to catch up with a particularly perturbed dip of one eyebrow, his cheeks slightly puffed like he was trying to hold in a wad of snide commentary. When he deflated, he was cagier than Daisy was used to seeing him, and even chewed his bottom lip a little when he spoke. “What's mad about it, eh? It's  _ your  _ William who won't let me be,” he frowned with an edge of despondence.

“Not _that_ ,” said Daisy with exasperation. “I meant the bit about snoopin' through Mr. Barrow's things. He'll _know_.”

“Please, Daisy. He's half the world away,” Jimmy retorted, folding his arms with ungracious flippancy as he started up the next flight of stairs with automated, rigid movements, the tails of his coat flapping behind him with a dizzying back and forth sway. Behind his turned back, he missed the unconvinced look that overtook Daisy's entire face as he added: “And I'm desperate.”

“Why?” Daisy wondered, her smallest whisper still a resounding echo in the empty stairwell, which reached all the way to the Abbey's tallest eave.

“'Cause I don't dream, Daisy – I _like_ dead sleepin', me,” he told her, still marching resolutely forward, a man on a mission. “But since you filled me head with all that chat about ghosts and all, I can't close me eyes without remberin _' –_ without _seein'....”_ At his inability to properly articulate himself, Jimmy scissored off his thought abruptly once more, growing pensive and morose as his midnight disturbances replayed for him in silence.

“Is it really so bad?” Daisy asked, growing more curious with each step she mounted on their way up. She'd never seen Jimmy so out of sorts, and it was odd to think that all this had been boiling just underneath the bravado that he'd dragged with him into the kitchen mere moments before.

“It's _terrible_ ,” Jimmy intoned as he rounded the next flight of stairs, flipping around just in time for Daisy to catch the anxiety in his face before the murky hallway ate it up once more. “Same dream every night, and there's your William, always where he ain't s'posed to be.”

“Maybe he's tryin' to tell you somethin',” Daisy suggested breathlessly, already starting to get winded by climbing the endless stairs at Jimmy's hurried pace. She clutched the handrail and used it to drag herself upwards, hoping she might get Jimmy to reconsider his plans before they reached the attics. “It's a shame Mr. Barrow isn't here, really – he'd know what to do. I told you before, he's got a knack for this sort of thing has Mr. Barrow.”

“Well, why'd'ya think we're goin' to push into his room, eh? To see what his sheets smell like?” Jimmy's tone was laden with sarcasm, but there was a hint of something else Daisy couldn't rightly name. If she had to guess, she might say it was almost _fearful,_ but that couldn't be so: Jimmy and Mr. Barrow were about as close as Mrs. Hughes and Mr. Carson, and it made no sense for Jimmy to be so edgy about a friend.

“Well, maybe you ought to try writin' him about it,” offered Daisy, growing a bit more nervous as they drew nearer to the final flight of stairs.

“Right, so I'll just pen me deepest secrets out for him and leave it where anyone could just pick it up and have a look – yeah, right. And you think _I'm_ the madcap?” said Jimmy in a way that almost certainly went with a roll of his eyes, even though the moonlight drifting through the windowpanes made it hard to see for sure.

By then, they had cleared the top of the stairs, and while Daisy showed a bit of hesitation to be standing on the men's side of the hall, Jimmy pressed forward like bringing her along was the least of his concerns. She wanted to protest more, to insist against digging through Mr. Barrow's belongings in search of something that probably wouldn't even do any good without Mr. Barrow anyway, but she was afraid of being heard by someone like Alfred – or worse, Mr. Carson. So she buttoned her lip and scurried after Jimmy as he purposefully strolled down the gloomy hallway and came to rest in front of a closed door whose placard bore the name  _ Thomas Barrow  _ in Mr. Carson's distinguishable handwriting. Jimmy put a hand on the knob and waited for Daisy to stand beside him before giving it a twist.

The room inside was smaller than the one Daisy shared with Ivy, but it had a fireplace – a fine indication of how far up Mr. Barrow had come in the world. The uninhabited space, dusty with motes of starlight, struck Daisy with a very otherworldy ambiance. She quietly shut the door behind her and leaned against it as she tracked Jimmy's movements through the looming shadows, noting the way Jimmy maneuvered through the place quite familiarly.

“I don't know what you mean to find in here,” said Daisy, electing to stay where she was until Jimmy told her otherwise.

“Me neither. Isn't that why you're here?” said Jimmy, even as he walked straight for Mr. Barrow's chest of drawers. A small vanity mirror, a wash basin, water pitcher and a number of neatly organized toiletries were arranged on top, all of which Jimmy rifled through as if they were his to touch.

Daisy watched him pull open the top two drawers of the bureau with a chaotic methodology that reminded her of something out of a Grand Guignol revue, all the while trying to discern what sort of lunacy had possessed Jimmy to drive him to this point. She hadn't meant any harm when she'd first brought up the spirits that roamed the halls of Downton, but clearly something she'd said had driven a splinter into Jimmy's head: she'd never seen him in such a state, and wasn't entirely certain what there was to do be done about it, even if they did manage to unearth Mr. Barrow's Ouija board. She wasn't sure how to tell Jimmy that there was more to it than just lighting a few candles in the dark, or how to explain to him that none of Downton's ghosts interacted with anyone without a reason to. As it was, she was pretty sure it was only because of Mr. Barrow that any of them could be bothered at all.

“Mind lendin' us a hand? Look under the bed or somethin',” Jimmy hissed over his shoulder, jerking Daisy out of her mental dalliance. He had already moved down to the next row of drawers, leaving the top two to hang sloppily out of their slots; a stray sock garter dangled over the front pull adorning the left one.

To appease him, Daisy followed his directions, though she couldn't help curiously examining Mr. Barrow's fireplace and the other accouterments of his room as she tiptoed by. Atop the mantle, there stood a candlestick caked in wax, a small clock and a bud vase containing a pale belladonna cutting, above which hung a curious photograph of Queen Victoria and a selection of nameless courtiers. It was so old and faded – a relic of another age entirely – Daisy wondered why Mr. Barrow would keep it on the wall at all, a thought she was incapable of keeping quiet.

“I dunno – maybe he fancies her gown or somethin',” Jimmy said without turning around, already on to the next row of drawers in the bureau. He seemed to have no reservations about going through Mr. Barrow's undergarments and pajamas, and she desperately hoped for Jimmy's sake that Mr. Barrow wouldn't mind when he inevitably found out – just as he always did.

Daisy made a face at the monarch that had ushered in their modern age, still a little puzzled. “Well, it  _ is  _ quite poofy and lovely – though I s'pose I always got the impression Mr. Barrow'd like to tell all them royal sorts to get stuffed.”

“Daisy, everyone with an earnin' wage thinks that – 'cept probably Mr. Carson, and even then, I wonder. So stop mindin' the wallpaper and do as you're told,” Jimmy replied mindlessly as he shoved Mr. Barrow's underwear drawer closed with defeated annoyance. He plopped down on the floor to move on to the bottom drawer, careless of his livery coat or his trousers. “Ah!” he exclaimed almost a bit too loudly when a heavy thump resounded from within the drawer as he pulled it out.

At Jimmy's apparent discovery, Daisy immediately forgot her task and hurried over to see what the fuss was about. She hovered behind Jimmy and bent over his shoulder, just able to make out a selection of books neatly piled inside the drawer. Jimmy was already dipping his hands inside to peruse the titles, which she tried to scan in the moonlight as he flipped through. It seemed Mr. Barrow had a taste for history from what she could see, though Jimmy didn't seem to find that particularly interesting, muttering, “Boring, boring, boring,” at the books he passed over on his goalless quest. Each volume he rejected got removed from the drawer and stacked at Jimmy's side, accumulating around him like a little city of tomes and ledgers.

It wasn't until Jimmy had mostly emptied the drawer that he found anything that caught his attention. “What's this – a play?” Jimmy wondered aloud as he fanned the pages of a small, narrow book he'd taken from the very bottom of the drawer. He strained towards the window, shoving the book into a square of moonlight to illuminate the text, and recited an arbitrary verse from the page beneath his thumb.

    “ _Strange is the night where black stars rise,_
    _And strange moons circle through the skies,_
     _But stranger still is  
_ _Lost Carcosa.”_

Daisy listened raptly, unable to stifle the thrill that came with the rises and falls of Jimmy's stage voice, even when hushed to a whisper. The way he spoke practically shifted the atmosphere, like he was inciting a spell to make the very fabric of the universe fray at its star-sewn seams. She didn't need Mr. Barrow to tell her that whatever script Jimmy was reading from contained words of power, and yet, when he was through with his scan of the text, the best thing she could think to say was, “You really do like theatre, don't'cha, Jimmy?”

“'Course I do. I've got taste, me,” said Jimmy, closing the little book and furrowing an eyebrow at its blank cover: there was no title to be found on its yellowed surface. “Though I can't account for Mr. Barrow. This is right obscure.”

“You should be an actor,” Daisy told him with an emphatic nod of her head, ignoring Jimmy's comments about Mr. Barrow's literary selections. She leaned over his shoulder and squinted into the dark recesses of the bottom drawer, where she espied two more books. Squatting down beside the blond footman, she reached inside to remove them, grunting slightly as she tried to heft the larger of the pair: it was a ghastly, heavy thing.

Jimmy's eyes sparkled with wonder as Daisy sat the last two tomes on the floor between them, clearly more enthralled by their weird appearances than she was. So thick was the fatter of the books that it could have been at least two Bibles strapped together; it was bound in leather and fit with a worn buckle that lashed the covers around its ancient pages. The other book was much slimmer, but was also dressed in leather. It was called  _ Livre d'Eibon, _ a name which was embossed in silver across the front.

“Who knew Mr. Barrow did French,” commented Jimmy as he picked up the latter of the pair, flipping through pages that crackled with age as he did so. It was full of strange illustrations he couldn't decipher any more than the language.

“A man of secrets is Mr. Barrow,” Daisy replied, reaching for the larger tome, which was by far the more curious of the two. She pried at the buckle that clamped the book shut, trying at it with hands that pulled, tugged and pushed – all to no avail. “And quite clever. I wonder what sorts of things he's got locked up in here.”

“Yeah, clever,” Jimmy mumbled under his breath, taking a second look at the French book with more scrutiny, hoping to find some sort of clue that might save his sleep. The words glistened inky in the pallid light filling the windowpanes as he scanned through, only able to comprehend a few snatches here and there, though he got the impression that even if he had actually be fluent, the writing still would have been complicated. He might have supposed the ornate illustrations that also populated the book were what had struck Thomas's fancy, but those were also weird and strangely troubling to study for too long.

“And so dark,” Jimmy breathed, speaking to no one in particular as he came to rest on a particularly stirring plate image. It depicted an unnatural creature through the repetition of patterned curves and bothersome angles. Something about it caught in his mind, and he found himself staring at it for a period of time that did not match the _tick-tock-tick-tock_ of the mantle clock.

It wasn't until the stiffness of being crunched up on the hardwood floor started to tense in his thighs and tingle in his feet that Jimmy realized how long he'd been captivated by  _ Livre d'Eibon _ . The patches of moonlight splotching the slanted eaves had shifted, and Daisy was curled up against the bureau, asleep. Her mouth hung open slightly, and one palm lay upturned on the disturbingly fat volume she'd been trying to unhinge last time he'd checked. It seemed that she still had not managed to be successful.

He watched her for a moment and thought he might rouse her so she could sneak back to the women's quarters, but he hastily reconsidered at a creaking floorboard out in hall. Electing that it would be much safer to wait for everyone to be at breakfast before slipping away, for the morning hours were drawing close, and there were sure to be more early-risers prowling about, he left her alone. Cavorting with Daisy in the midnight hours might have been mortifying in its own right, but the last thing he needed was any grief about what he'd been doing in Mr. Barrow's room, regardless of whether or not he was at home.

With that in mind, Jimmy pushed himself to his feet and stumbled towards Mr. Barrow's bed. If he was going to wait the night out, he might as well do so in a civil fashion. He laid  _ Livre d'Eibon _ on the bedside table, making room for it by pushing aside a pack of cigarettes, a suede-bound notebook and framed portrait that appeared to be Thomas around the age of twenty. Kicking off his brogues and climbing onto the small cot, which welcomed him with a disparaging groan, Jimmy propped up the pillows and leaned back against the meager bed frame, staring into the blackness. In its gloomy recesses, he was sure he saw a number of odd shapes that didn't fit the architecture of the room at all, and fretted about it until he came to the reasonable conclusion that the eldritch creature he'd been examining in the book for so long had influenced his perception. That resolved, he pushed it out of mind and helped himself to the suede notebook on the bedside table, deciding it must not have been very important to Thomas if he'd gone away without it.

Flicking through the little book, Jimmy quickly realized it was an old journal of some kind. The entries were mostly mundane and brief. Jimmy scanned a series of pages that detailed a trip Thomas had once taken to Manchester, interested in the snippets written about going to the theatre in such a big town – though he soon got the impression that Thomas's keen interest in such things was more rooted in a particularly handsome actor than the performances themselves. Quickly, he returned the journal to its place before he spent too much time thinking about the details.

The wind moaned outside, and Jimmy folded his hands over his stomach, resolutely focusing on nothing until the enchanting light of the moon weighted his eyelids and impressed a dazed breed of fatigue upon him. After days of staving off sleep, he was too exhausted to bristle in fear at the lucid dreaming that he knew awaited him if he succumbed to its clutches. Alas, despite his every air, Jimmy was still only a mortal, and half a week of insomnia-ridden hell were bound to catch up with him sooner or later; the spell of slumber quickly overtook him.

His recurring nightmare of the trenches returned with a blazing clarity that felt even more real than the times it had visited him before. As always, he watched Lyle Totten suffocate beneath an avalanche of debris that had been warped by an unsettling gloom, and – as always – he was dragged free of the danger by twisting tendrils of shadow that morphed into the muddy hands of another soldier he had come to know as William. So used to the routine was Jimmy that he almost didn't catch the inconsistency in this particular rendition of the dream: this time, one of the two hands yanking him backwards was decorated with a fingerless glove he should have recognized much sooner than he did.

It was only when he looked up, expecting to find William, that he realized the change – that instead of the departed footman, his savior was none other than Thomas Barrow, dirty and clad in an army medic's service uniform. He was breathing heavily, as if he'd just come barreling through time and space to assure Jimmy's safety, though there was still something smug about his expression regardless. He smirked with an air of pride that far superseded any immediate need for words on his part.

Still, for the first time since the nightmare had started haunting Jimmy did he find himself able to conjure his own voice. Incredulously, he demanded of Thomas: “What're  _ you  _ doin' here? This ain't how it goes.”

Thomas merely chuckled at him, “Amazin' what you notice once you know to look for it, isn't it?”

Just as Jimmy opened his mouth to retort, a sharp gasp filling his lungs, the world snapped from black to white, and he hurtled awake with such a jolt, Thomas's small bed screeched a few inches across the floor. Jimmy gasped with heaving shoulders as his eyes swung around the room, momentarily disoriented and unsure where he was. The sun burned holes into his vision as it poured between the muntin bars in violent, golden squares; he squinted into the light with a scowl, a scrunched hand at his forehead to shield his face from the glare. Such brightness made the room seem like a different place than what it was the previous night.

Daisy was gone, and when he peered at the mantle clock, he was horrified to realize that it was approaching luncheon hour, which meant that Mr. Carson was probably going to strangle him with his own tie for being so inexcusably late. Nearly tumbling out of the bed, he did his best to flatten the wrinkles out of his livery, though he knew it would probably be a moot effort under Mr. Carson's discerning scrutiny. He found a comb on Thomas's bureau, which he used to style his hair with a smear of scented oil – also pilfered from Thomas's toiletries – and obsessed over the curl in his forelock, twisting it around his finger as he fussed over himself in the looking glass with conceit.

Despite his expertise in the art of personal appearance, as Jimmy arranged himself, a refraction of sunlight in the mirror hampered his ability to consistently see himself properly in the glass. He tilted his head this way and that as the sunbeams dappled flamboyantly across the reflective surface, highly displeased that he couldn't even squeeze in a hasty wash-up under such circumstances. It annoyed him profusely that something so trite was severely delaying his escape from Thomas's room. He imagined each tardy second he lingered was going to earn him another extra job Mr. Carson couldn't get anyone else to do.

Jimmy eventually shifted his position so that the sun hit his back, craning his neck oddly so that he could still watch himself in the mirror. A long shadow hit it, obscuring part of his face as it fought against the slivers of gold that managed to dart around his cheeks, and for a moment, he swore the dark shape was trying to push into places it shouldn't be.

_ You have got to stop all this rotten dreamin', you soft sod, _ Jimmy commanded himself as he squinted the world into a blurry mess in hopes it would correct the things that didn't belong in the proper, scientific world he knew.  _ It's makin' you into a proper nutter, seein' things and all. _

As punishment, he needled his middle finger into one eye and then went back to fixing his tie, which he couldn't seem to knot properly even after three attempts. His shirt and collar had lost their starch, and he was missing a stud for the bib, which he sought to replace with one of Thomas's left-behind spares. The brass links clacked beneath his touch as Jimmy rolled his fingers through the selection forgotten in a tray on the bureau. When he found a suitable pair, he lifted his gaze back to the mirror so that he might fasten his shirt, but he never got that far: the stud slipped from his grip and bounced across the floor with a clatter as he stared into the vanity glass – and Thomas Barrow calmly stared back.

It was only for a brief moment. No sooner did Jimmy bang the heel of his hand repeatedly into his forehead, all the while resisting the urge to scream in frustration, did the incorrect reflection evaporate back to his own visage. “I can't stand this shite,” he told his mirrored face, which was creased with agitation; “I'll put meself into an early grave at this rate.”

Jimmy abandoned the task of perfecting his look and quickly pulled his tie into a messy bow before making a mad dash for the door, not daring to look back. It was probably better that he didn't, for Thomas's reflection watched him go from beneath the shadow on the glass, and only receded once Jimmy had slammed the door on his way out.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The verse Jimmy reads is from the fictional play 'The King In Yellow', featured in Robert Chambers' work -- 'The Yellow Sign' in particular. Madness consumes anyone who reads the whole thing. The other two books harken back to my boy, Lovecraft....
> 
> PS  
> I'm sorry about the delay in posting. Anyone who follows me on Tumblr will know what a shitshow the last two weeks have been for me. I think I'll be able to get back on track now, so I do apologize <3


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas explores Coney Island.

 

Thomas's next day off came sooner than he anticipated. After helping Lord Grantham dress that morning, he dithered below stairs at the Levenson townhouse until the butler curtly informed him that His Lordship would be tied up in business affairs until late, and that the rest of the afternoon was his own. Thomas didn't need to be told twice before his overcoat and hat were on and his foot was outside the door.

He had wanted to visit Coney Island ever since his encounter with the clerk at the tobacconist, quite intrigued by the queer story he'd picked up there. Through no real design, soon found himself on the Sea Beach line, staring out the window as the train pulled across its elevated track over Brooklyn. It was quite different from the Levinsons' nouveau riche home just off Central Park, littered instead with neighborhoods that weren't at all grand or chic. A low haze hung over the wide cemetery that rushed by on either side of the track and cut a swathe through the crisscrossing avenues and walk-up row homes of Gravesend.

Coney Island lay beyond that, and was the last stop on the BRT before Brooklyn fell into the Atlantic. After a nearly two hour journey from midtown Manhattan, Thomas alighted from the train in a vaulted arcade that housed an endless spread of rail platforms and milling vacationers looking for a break by the seaside. He floated with the crowd towards the stairs that led down to the street level with a relieving sort of calm. Something about the anonymity that came with becoming lost in the choking crowds that ebbed and flowed the length of the city eased his usually prickled nerves: back in Yorkshire – where everyone's business seemed to be that of everyone else – he constantly felt stripped and scrutinized for merely drawing breath; in New York, no one cared a whit about him so long as he kept moving and stayed well out of the way.

The shore was alive with merriment and smelled of popcorn and brine. Carnival music flitted with the seagulls and kites against the clouds, but it was the Wonder Wheel – a magnificent Ferris wheel that rotated lazily in the summer heat and pricked the late afternoon sky with dots of electric bulbs as it turned – which drew Thomas's attention first. He allowed himself to be carried through the thronging hawkers and nickel-amusements to investigate. He'd never seen anything quite like it before.

On the corner of Surf and Stillwell, he stopped to try a hotdog and ate it as he wandered towards the boardwalk. He sucked the mustard off his fingers when he was finished eating, and then bought a ticket for the Wonder Wheel. He told himself that he was curious to know what the tobacconist clerk had been on about when he'd mentioned seeing the whole beach from the top, but, instead, spent the duration frowning at the flirty couple he was forced to share a car with. The way the young gentleman made his ladylove giggle with private whispers as he held her hand made Thomas bitter that he couldn't have done the same with Jimmy.  _ How much fun he'd've had here _ , Thomas groused numerous times throughout the ride, a thought that made it impossible for him to enjoy any of it for himself.

Afterwards, his dampened mood was slightly improved upon finding a souvenir stand that sold postcards depicting the Wheel; he parted with a dime in exchange for one and continued on his way to the boardwalk, all the while arranging and rearranging the missive he'd like to write for Jimmy on the back. Somewhere along the promenade, he found an empty bench and tortured himself with the question as to whether it would be too forward to tell Jimmy he wished they could have been there together.

As he sat, children flew ahead of their parents with trailing balloons; a girl riding on the back of a double-seated bicycle trilled its bell at him, and a pair of gulls pecked at a forgotten hunk of bread near his feet. Thomas tapped the tip of the pencil he'd procured from his jacket against the blank postcard and pursed his lips.

Eventually, he folded the postcard around the pencil in frustration and crammed it into his inside coat pocket, jammed his hands into the ones in his trousers and strode broodingly along the promenade. The boardwalk amusement parks glowed brightly in the approaching dusk, but he passed them all by in his aimless wandering. He wasn't quite sure what he was looking for, but he had a suspicion he would know it when he found it.

His feet carried him back to Mermaid Avenue, where he walked until the touristy section of the neighborhood started to give way to a rougher scene. It was there, just on the outskirts of the more Jewish communities in the area, that Thomas felt a need to stop, his attention captured by a tattered carnival poster pasted unobtrusively onto the wall of a brick warehouse. The worn advertisement hung above a stairwell that burrowed beneath the pavement to a basement door, and invited the reader to visit below. The scrolling typeface proclaimed: ' _ The Esoteric Dagon Troupe Dares You To Witness Sights Untold!'  _ The image of an unsightly woman that looked to have gills tattooed to her neck beckoned with outstretched, stubby hands. Written across her purplish skirts were the words,  _ 'Admission – Fifty Cents' _ .

Thomas dug through his pockets for the last of his change and descended the steep staircase.

At the bottom, a collection of mucky water had pooled, steeping into his shoes and wetting his socks. Thomas tried not to be annoyed as he knocked on the door. When no one answered, he jiggled the handle, which turned easily on the first attempt. He pushed the door inwards on its groaning hinges, revealing a dank interior that struck him instantly with its fetor. Boldly, he stepped inside and released the door, which fell closed behind him with an enunciated thump, wrapped him in a shroud of gloom.

Even though his vision quickly adjusted to the darkness, he couldn't immediately find anyone to direct him, or even a place to drop the pair of coins cutting into his palm. All there was to guide him was the dull, orange fizz of an incandescent bulb at the end of a long corridor, which he advanced towards without much care as to what might await him at the end. A leaky drip echoed from somewhere ahead, growing in resonance with each forward step he took; in the distance, he thought he could hear an eerie semblance of music _. _

The light bulb turned out to mark where the corridor took a sharp turn. Thomas followed the narrow path, his shoulders nearly grazing the walls as he navigated his way onward. Curiosity was not something Thomas was particularly noted for back at Downton, but then again, neither was much of anything else personal about him. He supposed he preferred it that way; it made it easier for him to keep his secrets. He  _ supposed _ .

Often, he wished he could talk more freely about himself. Even around Jimmy, – or perhaps  _ especially  _ around Jimmy – there were things he still carefully edited out of their relationship, constantly worried that one misplaced suggestion would send the blond footman stomping out of his life for good. It was always hard to tell with Jimmy, truth be told: for someone who bragged so much about his worldliness and devil-may-care morals, Jimmy could be surprisingly uptight. Thomas wasn't foolish enough to let himself take any real guesses as to why – though it certainly didn't stop him from wanting.

He tried to shove it out of mind – though the effort was always only superficial at best – and returned to the moment at hand. Thomas wondered what Jimmy would think if he knew that Thomas had spent the better part of his off-day chasing urban ghosts through Brooklyn on a whim.  _ Bit of cheek about it, prob'ly _ , Thomas instantly assessed, unsure how he felt about the prospect: Jimmy might have found the notion ridiculous, but Thomas knew better.

Thomas knew  _ much  _ better.

As long as Thomas had known that he was  _ different,  _ he had known that there were other things about the world that were also forced to exist in secret. When he had been younger, he had found solace in stories about those who lingered between dreaming and death, which might have passed as nonsense to some, but had helped Thomas feel much less alone in the dark. People often left him, though age had taught how little that actually mattered; now it was just a pain he was used to.

_ If only I could be as confident in you _ , Thomas thought wistfully as the taunting sound of Jimmy's laughter filled his head and drowned out the trickling water that resonated through the passage.

Still, it was such understanding that had led him to this dank place, where the stench of sewage of and something more  _ morbid  _ in nature assaulted his nostrils the further he ventured down the corridor. He was incited onward by the increasing volume of rushing water and an otherworldly presence that filled his lungs with an ether that stung the very air and thrilled in his empty chest.

Another subdued light bulb splashed its reddened luminescence against the brickwork at the end of the hall, highlighting a heavy door that was latched tight with a pair of interlocking mechanisms that reminded Thomas of clockwork gears. He peered at the twin locks, searching for a place where he might unfasten them, but saw only seamless engineering with no catch or spring to be found. An icy draft filtered through the narrow sliver between the doorjamb and the post, and through the crack, the faint lilt of a street organ screeched out a beckoning dirge.

The phantasmal atmosphere crowded the tight space, pressed up against the door with him and manifested in a white shadow that caught in the electric glow. It bore the outline of a woman with hair matted by the sea and kelp tangled in her dress, hovering in the patches of hellish light without actually giving off any of her own. Thomas acknowledged her with a slight inclination of his chin no different than he might have anyone else he knew in life, and retained his focus on the strange door instead.

“Fifty cents, fifty cents,” the apparition prompted him, watching him with empty eye sockets. When the unsteady light bulb waxed to its brightest, it was plain they had been dug out of her skull with something blunt. “It cost me fifty cents.”

Thomas listened to the ghostly murmur and clenched the two quarters in his hand tighter, thinking. His thumb slid across the slimy metal that encased the locking mechanisms and at once discovered a pair of narrow slots that were nearly invisible in the poor light. With a little more tactile exploration, he realized that the slots were carved into rotating discs that were so flush to the rest of the casing, they would have almost impossible to pick out in the dark. Experimentally, he inserted each of his coins into the slots: the fit was perfect, and accommodated half of each, creating a crank of sorts. Thomas twisted them together, a prickle of excited pride shot within him as the clang of moving parts creaked through the forgotten passageway. The mechanism swallowed his quarters and the bolts rolled back.

Thomas pushed the unlocked door inwards and the corridor was instantly flooded with the dancing warmth of gaslight from the other side. He flung the back of one hand over his blinded eyes at the shock of it. When his wrist fell away from his face, the spectral gatekeeper had receded into the fade, leaving him alone in the entryway to a high-vaulted basement chamber decorated in faded motley and dozens of hanging lanterns. Three rows of tiered benches flanked a central ring, the floor of which had been crudely stained with mad patterns that circulated a deep well in the middle. Beneath the grating that barred its mouth, the aquatic rush Thomas had heard upon his approach shouted up from its depths.

At the far end of the room, a pulled curtain, gathered aside with a corroded chain, revealed a fresco aged by salt water and damp; its pallid colors were just enough to suggest a monstrous, unnatural shape rising from a torrid seascape. The wind-up organ plunking out the disjointed requiem that had led Thomas there was just visible behind the hanging velvet. In all, the place gave Thomas the impression of some sort of demented circus, and he entered the room with a vague sense of amusement about it. “Freak show indeed,” he said to himself as the door swung shut behind him with a bang and the faint clatter of the lock reengaging on the other side.

However, Thomas was far from concerned, quite confident in his ability to take care of himself. He chose a spot on one of the benches at random and sat down to wait. He had seen something like this before, though it hadn't been executed in such a ridiculously schmaltzy fashion. It had been a trip to rural Scotland that had brought him upon a ghastly ritual out on the moors, where he'd stumbled upon a cult that painted their faces with similar designs and danced naked with skeletons for the Old Ones. Other places he'd visited had given insight to other such tales: similarly ancient traditions and the weird happenings he'd encountered were a happy reminder that eldritch things weren't ever truly forgotten – just buried.

_ Wouldn't Mr. Carson just hate to hear proof that his word is hardly the highest law? _ Thomas sniggered to himself as he patted his coat down for his cigarettes and lighter. Finding the packet in the same pocket as the postcard he'd bought for Jimmy, he removed it and pulled a fag out of the wrapping with his mouth before setting it aflame with a practiced flick. A droll chuckle tumbled from him:  _ Even some of the books in His Lordship's library could attest to that. _

The folded postcard had come out with the cigarette pack and now lay innocuously on Thomas's knee as he smoked, staring at its blank backside as he killed time with ideas as to what he still might write. It often floored him how he could be so at peace with the strange chaos around him, and yet still so horribly juvenile in his internal dealings.

_ My darling _ , he wanted to start – just as he always wanted to start his every letter to Jimmy;  _ My darling, how I've missed you.... _

He ghosted the words with the pencil ever so lightly on the card, as if to test how it might feel to say such a thing so brazenly to the object of his affection. The practice of it left him to imagine lounging on the beach with Jimmy, watching the breakers pound the shoreline, while they chewed taffy and sipped ale until they were both drunk enough to do somersaults in the sand together. He wanted to peel a wet forelock away from Jimmy's salty brow and a wet shirtsleeve down over his toned shoulders – to kiss Jimmy with lips made sticky from candy floss on the Wonder Wheel, when the moon was bright over the water and the stars sparkled with his pleasure at the touch. He wanted to tell Jimmy just how much it all meant to him.

But he confessed none of those things. Instead, he wrote:  _ Jimmy: this place is nothing like you've ever seen in England. You would have loved to come here – _

He left it at that, forgetting to even punctuate his sentence as he continued to imagine the way he'd have most liked to phrase the rest of his thought.  _ With me _ , he again traced through the air with the pencil's graphite tip;  _ You would have loved to have come here with me _ .

“Jeepers – a _customer_!” came a sudden exclamation from another part of the room. Thomas's head snapped up to find an unnaturally tall man wearing a _bauta_ masque and a well-tailored waistcoat striding purposefully towards him. In one swooping motion, the man came to rest in front of Thomas and greeted him with a theatrical bow, throwing an arm out like he meant to flick out an invisible cape; “What can we do you for? Care to hear the tales of the deep? About horrors most unmentionable?”

Thomas took a long drag on his cigarette and then said dismissively, “Don't mind me. I'm just here to observe.”

Thomas's nonchalant demeanor seemed to relax the other man, who nodded curtly at Thomas in reply. “Excellent, sir – just  _ excellent. _ For we aim to allow you just that!” the man told Thomas with another exaggerated bow that pleased Thomas immensely despite its pomp. It was nice to be afforded the respect he deserved, even if it was rooted in saccharine frivolity.

Spinning around on one heel, the tall man abruptly lifted his hands and clapped them twice in rapid succession: “Look alive, then!” he shouted to persons unseen; “The gentleman wants to be  _ amazed _ .”

At once, a bustle of activity swept the place. A young boy and an adolescent girl came scurrying from behind the hanging curtain and to the center of the room, where they crouched around the central well and began to loosen its grated lid. Despite the fact that their clothes were hardly more than secondhand rags, both masked in a similar fashion to the waistcoated ringmaster and seemed to bear no objections to their laborious task.

Meanwhile, an older trio – two women and another man – also appeared in  _ bauta  _ masque and robes that were vaguely Venetian in style. One of the women was significantly taller than her companions, and measured up to even the height of the gangling ringmaster. Thomas wondered idly if they were related: they both had the same thin, fishy lips and wide jawline. The other two appeared ordinary, but with most of their faces obscured beneath such masquerade, it was impossible to know for sure.

When the two children had finished lugging the grating off the opening, they dragged it to the edge of the ring and then sat obediently on either side of the rusted monstrosity like well-trained dogs. The roar of the sea echoed loudly from the depths of the well. and muddled the room with a briny blast of stale sea foam. Something about the smell was heady, almost noxious, though Thomas wasn't bothered by it, and, in fact, found it rather pleasant to breathe.

Then, a strange performance began. The ringmaster faced Thomas and spoke with showmanship worthy of the boardwalk above, though the phrases that left his lips were cryptic and ill-fitted for such guile. With wild gesticulations at the robed trio, which had now arranged itself around the well, the ringmaster gave meaning to their silent ritual like a priest leading Mass.

“ _Behold_ the chosen ones, bred by the salt of the deep,” cried the ringleader as Thomas lit another cigarette and watched the tall woman remove a slender, whalebone dagger from the depths of her robes, which she then used to cut into her palm without pause or reservation. Unflinchingly, she held her hand over the well and let the blood drip into the darkness, and then passed the dagger to her compatriots, who followed suit.

As the other two extended their wounded hands over the well, the ringmaster addressed Thomas: “We, the faithful, beg the children of Y'ha-nthlei to feast upon our sacrifice – a carnal delight for all!”

The swishing reverberation of churning water within the well whipped up its frenzy enough to spray the robed trio with a mist of sea salt, not a single one of them even flinched. An anticipatory thrill filled Thomas as he leaned forward to watch, his elbows resting heavily on his knees; his cigarette burned, forgotten, between two pinched fingers. Here was the heralding moment! The cusp between what was true and what was only imagined.

Without warning, one of the children screamed in terror, momentarily distracting Thomas from the main event. His eyes darted over towards the young boy at the edge of the ring, who was clinging to the girl and trembling, though remained transfixed by the horror unfolding center stage Thomas turned back to the well, quickly espying what had given the child such a start, and a smirk began to play at his lips.  _ Not such a tall tale after all _ , he thought blithely.

Curled over the lip of the well was a gray, scaled hand capped in black talons. A slimy film webbed between each of the unnaturally long fingers, which skittered ominously around the well's edge as if the three cultists were being sorted by means of a roulette. Then, abruptly, the creeping hand paused decisively at the feet of the shorter of the two women, and began to gravitate towards her. She remained still – almost enraptured – as the grotesque hand drew nearer, revealing a serpentine forearm spiked with small fins, a knobby elbow. Thomas leaned in further still, his tongue pushed into his cheek as the climax built: a hint of a ridged head crested the mouth of the well as the creature began to climb out, yearning.

“Like so many before her, the maiden longs to fulfill her sacred calling,” the ringmaster narrated with delight, clearly eager for what was to come next. He directed another wild bow at Thomas, as if he were presenting the spectacle to him on a platter, and went on, a high crescendo peaking his candor: “Salt of the earth, salt of the sea!”

With eerie zeal, all the masked cultists – even the two children sitting on the grate – all repeated the last phrase like an unholy Amen.

Thomas was rapt with interest as the amphibious creature hoisted itself out of the well and crawled towards the woman with an investigative air to its movements – a primitive sort of mating dance. Though her face was covered by the  _ bauta  _ masque, Thomas could tell that she was not afraid, and, in fact, even welcomed the sea creature's interest. There was an excitement about the aggressive nature the beast possessed – an uncertainty as to whether the creature would accept her, or merely tear her to shreds. Joined with the woman's blind acceptance of whatever her fate might be, it truly was a memorizing feature.

As he watched, Thomas was reminded of a story he'd heard about a harbor town in Massachusetts, where the residents coupled similarly with the ancient children of the ocean. It was fascinating to consider that their kind had run this far down the coast – a promising sign that the worshipers of the Deep Ones were not a thin breed, even in such a modern age. Dying cults meant displeased gods – and displeased gods triggered chaos. Thomas had gotten far too used to careful orchestration to even consider such disaster.

“The time is nigh,” the ringleader whispered _sotto voce_ as he watched the creature draw nearer to the woman, its sharp claws threatening to puncture her as it needled at her with its webbed paws.

The chamber's masked occupants all waited on baited breath for the practiced continuation of their interbreeding ritual, but the moment that never quite arrived, snatched away by a strange, unexpected turn. Just as the passing curiosity about how the Deep Ones had populated this far from their familiar waters flickered through Thomas's head, the creature froze, halting the proceedings to twist its fish-like head over a bony shoulder, staring straight at Thomas with empty, bulbous eyes as if Thomas had said it aloud. At once, it abandoned the woman and slunk around the well, loping towards Thomas with shifted focus. The irregularity of it whipped the cultists up into a frenzy, clearly bothered that their idol had snuffed its interest in any of them.

“Someone _grab_ it,” the ringmaster squealed as the creature breached the edge of the ring and perched itself on the bench in front of Thomas, leering across the space between them to peer at him intently. Thomas exhaled into the thick fog of cigarette smoke that clung to his hair and cheeks, and stared back, quietly analyzing the thing that had heard his thoughts.

The ugly truth of the little sect quickly came to light the closer Thomas looked: the pulsating gills on the creature's neck were crusted with algae scum; barnacles rooted deeply into the thing's flesh masked flogged scars, the discovery of which actually made Thomas's blood boil. Behind the captive Deep One, the cultists were scrambling; the two women had produced a thick fishing net from somewhere and were currently dragging it towards the creature; the robed man was brandishing the whalebone dagger with malicious intent.

“I can't promise it won't kill you, sir,” the ringmaster said gravely, removing a pocket pistol from within his waistcoat. He cocked the hammer and carefully crept towards Thomas, the butt of the revolver steadied on his forearm. “But quit moving and stay right where you are, and it's prob'ly your best bet.”

Despite the dire behavior of the others, Thomas's only reaction was to flick his cigarette butt to the floor and stub it out with the heel of his brogue. A chuckle filtered through his lips, which were crooked with amusement at the whole scene, as he casually lit up a fresh cigarette and flicked his gaze back at the looming Deep One. “I'm sure it's not,” he remarked with an easy shrug.

“Listen, you snide mug,” snapped the ringmaster, growing ever nearer with his drawn firearm. “I've seen this sorta shit happen once or twice in my time. Never pretty, so just let me take care of it.”

“And why'd you be so certain of that?” asked Thomas, drawing his cigarette to his mouth for another languid puff. “'Cause you think you're master here?” A smug smile intensified through the tendrils of smoke twisting around his face. “How sad for you.”

Thomas's lack of importance about anything seemed to really get under the ringleader's skin. The pistol quivered in his hand as his mouth flapped uselessly his rage, clearly too addled by Thomas's attitude to come up with any sort of reply better than – in a moment of madness – shifting his aim from the creature to Thomas. “I've got a real mind to shut you up. For  _ good _ ,” he yelled, not at all willing to be reasonable about the whole affair when it was obvious that he was the one in error. “You're supposed to be here just to  _ watch _ .”

“Is that meant to frighten me?” Thomas asked calmly, fitting his cigarette between his lips so that he could free his hands. He unbuttoned the fingerless glove he usually kept wrapped around his old war wound and rolled the fabric off his fingers to reveal the scarred bullet hole in his palm. Brandishing it at the ringmaster, he informed him, “Because it'll take more than _that_.”

The ringmaster jabbed the pistol in Thomas's direction as a sort of warning, though he was transfixed by the sight of Thomas's disfigured palm. He stared through the punched out flesh like it was a hole in the world, a brief lapse in his aggressive overture.

Even the Deep One, which was still lingering in front of Thomas, seemed to find fascination in Thomas's hand, and started at it with its head cocked at a jaunty angle, its inky black eyes tracking each gesture Thomas made with it. A stillness befell the chamber – a silence so deafening, a mere heartbeat seemed enough to make the gaslight shiver and jump nervously in their glass cages – through which Thomas drew his hand experimentally in front of the Deep One's gaze, noting the way it remained in his thrall. He flicked his fingers in the direction of the ringleader and his cohorts; the Deep One's attention jumped instantly.

Thomas clicked his fingers – and chuckled.

With a speed that none of the cultists anticipated, the Deep One turned on them with shark teeth bared and talons raised. It easily cut through the man with the dagger, who had blindly launched himself at the violent creature with his blade, leaving him to suffocate on the blood gurgling from the swift gash it had left on his neck. Simultaneously, the ringmaster attempted to fire his weapon as the Deep One as it barreled towards him, but the sea beast swung a mighty claw into him before he had a chance. The gun ricocheted awkwardly back, unloading a bullet at a wild trajectory that found one of the dangling lanterns and burst into a magnificent ball of flame that licked the velvet curtain dangerously.

Thomas leaned back on his good hand to watch, murmuring to himself in a congratulatory fashion: “Now  _ this  _ is a proper show, isn't it?”

The Deep One and the ringmaster were locked in a fierce grapple, the gun still waving dangerously between them. Its barrel was pressed against the Deep One's fish-like head, but the nature of the fighting kept the ringmaster from steadying a good shot – especially considering the brutal claws and teeth the Deep One was armed with. When the trigger was finally squeezed, the gun slipped with the force of it, sending another bullet astray in the chaos: it zinged across the room and nailed the tall woman squarely in the forehead, shattering her  _ bauta  _ masque and killing her instantly. Her sudden death sent the other woman fleeing the chamber in a mad fury, the fishing net abandoned in a tangle behind her.

“Unfortunate!” called Thomas from the bleachers, clutching his glove eagerly as he quickly burned through the rest of his cigarette in his excitement. He watched the dead woman drop with satisfaction, though he was startled when he got a better look at her unmasked face, which was a monstrous amalgamation between human and sea creature. As she fell, the hood of her robe fell away, revealing twin sets of gills lining her neck, a clear indication of her commingled lineage.

“You.. are _mine_!” the ringmaster gasped at the Deep One, their similar heights making the match a bit more even. “You will obey!”

The Deep One did nothing of the kind, and instead tore at the ringmaster's shoulder, managing to rip a chunk of gore out between his clamped teeth. The rows of incisors were faded from dull yellow to pinpricks of bright crimson at their razored tips as the creature loosened maw and let the raw flesh plop to the floor.

Despite all reason, the danger of the situation gave Thomas a thrill he had sorely missed through the humdrum cycle of everyday life, and he couldn't help but remain as he was, even as things grew more volatile. Besides, he'd just made a private wager with himself on the outcome of the battle, and he wanted to see it through.

It didn't take long for Thomas to get his result: the ringleader tried again to fire the pistol, this time managing to at least graze his target with the shot. The recoil worked against him in a final way, giving the Deep One just enough time to clamp down on the ringmaster's neck with its fearsome bite. Teeth sunk through the skin and crunched through his spine with ease, painting the Deep One's wide mouth with a victorious slather of blood. The body shuddered in the thing's grasp as the final sparks of life ebbed away, but the Deep One had already lost interest now that the ringmaster could no longer retaliate. Then, the thing dropped the corpse before it had even gone cold, leaving it to crumple unnaturally on the ground as it bounded over towards Thomas like a dog seeking accolades from its master for a job well done.

“You're welcome,” said Thomas as he surveyed the creature's work. In Thomas's opinion, the carnage wasn't particularly horrific, but it smacked of vengeance all the same. The sight triggered a short litany of individuals in Thomas's life he wished he could punish with a similar fate, and he took a brief moment to relish the sick details of how much he'd like to do it. He'd start with Sarah O'Brien for sure, and then perhaps follow her up with a go at the man that was supposed to be his father.

Deciding that it was at last time to get on, Thomas stood and dusted off the seat of his trousers as he took another look around the chamber. He was alone with the creature, and supposed that the children and the other woman must have escaped through some other passageway besides the one he'd entered through. He supposed finding that would be the next aspect of this particular adventure.

Edging through the ring towards the demonic fresco that lined the chamber's back wall, Thomas picked through the bloody mess with the delicate sensibilities of someone whose disdain for a soiled pant leg or shoe was tantamount to a cardinal sin. Despite that, he still paused by the ringmaster's nearly decapitated body long enough to gingerly toe the masque off with a flick of his foot. The tiny motion nearly tore the fleshy tendrils keeping the head attached to the stump that was once a neck, but as he suspected, the ugly face beneath the gangling man's  _ bauta _ shared the same aquatic features that defined the other dead cultist's distinctive look. Most likely, they were both related to the captive Deep One, which followed Thomas through the bloodbath – albeit with a much less discerning gait.

As the odd pair circled around the well in the center of the chamber, Thomas couldn't help but take a curious glance inside. It was a long, dank shaft that seemed to connect to some forgotten segment of sewer, half filled with grimy sea water that didn't look like a particularly nice place for any sort of creature to dwell. Thomas sneered distastefully into the murky prison, glad that his meddling had at least done  _ someone  _ a good turn.

He continued on towards the back, ignoring the small tongues of fire that the broken gas lamp had sneezed across the velvet hanging, and instead focused his curiosity on what was hidden behind it. Sure enough, the entrance to some sort of workman's tunnel loomed in the shadows cast by the curtain, a faint echo of the ocean whistling from its unseen end. Thomas lingered by the opening to re-cover his scar while he still had a little light by which to do so, and then, with a heavy sigh, resigned himself to the probability that his shoes were going to need a serious shine once he returned to the Levinson townhouse. The Deep One continued to keep pace with him, clearly sensing that Thomas did not mean it any harm. Thomas plunged into the blackness and forged ahead, his thoughts inevitably returning to Jimmy in the silence encapsulated within the long tunnel.

At the end of the tunnel, standing in a shaft of starlight, was a ladder. It leaned against the wall and climbed up to a round opening in the arched ceiling. Thomas mounted the first rung and began to ascend, pulling himself through the exit to find himself upon sand that was littered with dried flotsam and lined with slats of moonshine that slid through the boardwalk overhead. Below, the Deep One was struggling with the mechanics of the ladder; Thomas found it within himself to lay across the beach debris and drop a helping hand for the creature to steady itself on. The touch of its scaly paw against the skin of his hand sent a jolt up the length of Thomas's arm, like a cascade of ancient and unknown histories had suddenly flashed through his mind all at once.

Thomas wasn't sure how long he'd dallied with the underground freak show, but the sky was awash with stars and the boardwalk carnivals sounded far less lively than they had been in the afternoon. Righting himself into a proper sitting position, a glance at his pocket watch informed him that it was nearly half ten.

Ahead of him, the breakers pounded the shoreline with the soothing rhythm of the tide. Thomas returned his watch to his waistcoat and pulled his knees up against his chest as the Deep One shuffled by him, mindlessly loping towards the water like it was being drawn there by a siren's song. He watched it go with weary, indifferent eyes that had grown tired with the troubles they'd seen. The incident had certainly been strange – and something of an education for Thomas in his American travels – but even flirting with such death and mayhem was not enough to overshadow the typical grief of his existence. The Deep One vanished beneath the waves without a sound, and Thomas's shoulders slumped, a heavy breath wheezing through his nostrils. He craved a smoke desperately.

Alone under the boardwalk, he emptied the contents of his inside coat pocket. With one hand, he flicked a new cigarette, and in the other, he pinched the creased Wonder Wheel postcard he'd bought for Jimmy. His brows gathered in frustration as he traced the novelty photograph in the wan glow of the seaside, its details more or less obscured by the bands of shadow cast by the planks above. He flipped the card over and reread the feeble phrase he'd eked out a seemingly infinite number of hours ago. The hollow falseness of the words was glaring to him, which left him to agonize over whether  _ Jimmy  _ would think so. It was an impossible question.

_ I wonder if you'd believe all the things I'd like to show you _ , Thomas thought with a frown, his mind decorated with a flurry of dark folklore and late-night kisses. Both seemed equally unreasonable as he gruffly reminded himself of the long list of women he had to contest with for Jimmy's attention, making him wish – not for the first time – that he didn't have such a penchant for choosing only rude, naughty boys. He supposed he couldn't help it: Jimmy was everything he'd ever wanted in a man, and when they were together, it was so easy to feel like Jimmy didn't have eyes for anyone else.

_ And the more fool, me _ , Thomas berated himself as his thumb crunched sharply into the postcard. He came very close to screaming his frustration at the vacant beach, and was muzzled only by the cigarette smoke clogged in his throat.

Yet in that moment, beneath the stars that flickered their own lonely, far flung stories through the night, Thomas decided he had no room to complain. He'd managed to go this long, and he supposed that one way or another, he'd be fine.

Or so he told himself as he pressed his forehead against his knees and closed his eyes, dreaming of what living would be like if only Jimmy loved him.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for all the Brooklyn porn. I miss home so I can't help myself. Coney Island is literally the greatest place in the world. I'm only sad Thomas will have been there about three years before the Cyclone was built ;D 
> 
> Anyway, thanks to everyone for reading -- especially after this insanity, haha. More of this kind of weirdness to come, so buckle in. The Deep Ones, for those who aren't up on their Lovecraft, are more or less Cthulhu spawn... aliens that now live in our oceans. Most of the background for this particular chapter came from 'The Shadow Over Innsmouth' by Lovecraft. The people of Innsmouth are all mostly cultists who are inbred with the Deep Ones and have a particular inhuman look to them. Eventually they turn into sea creatures and go to live in the ocean.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new parcel from Thomas arrives for Jimmy, but he's been strangely missing. Daisy goes to find him.

 

_Plunk!_

The potato chunk dropped from Daisy's hand and splashed into the crock pot that was bubbling with the makings of a soup for the upstairs dinner. She stirred the brew viciously, creating a deep eddy that very much mirrored the annoyance that was stewing within her as Alfred patiently demonstrated to Ivy the proper way to mince vegetables. It was bad enough she had to endure watching it; it was made worse by knowing that Ivy already knew well and fine enough how to chop a carrot, and that she was being clumsy at it on purpose.

_ Plunk! Plunk! _ _ Plunk! _

“Yeah, you curl your hand like that as you go,” Alfred was telling Ivy, standing almost presumptuously close to her as he oversaw her progress. “It wouldn't do to be shortenin' such nice fingers, eh?”

Ivy let out a pretty laugh, but Daisy caught the very pointed glare that Ivy was flinging at her underneath Alfred's chin. If Daisy hadn't been sure before, she was more than aware of it now: she and Ivy were at war – though the particulars as to why still eluded her. In a huff, Daisy whirled around to face the stove properly, stirring faster as she unleashed another torrent of potatoes into the mix.

_Plunkplunkplunk!_

She had been late that morning, forced to wait until the male staff had gone down for breakfast in order to sneak out of Mr. Barrow's room unnoticed. Ivy hadn't let her forget it, making a point to draw Mrs. Patmore's attention to how  _ invaluable  _ and  _ reliable  _ she was by comparison with word choices that seemed to have a secondary tone of suggestion about Daisy's moral fiber.  _ Like she has room to talk!  _ Daisy thought cheekily as the force of her stirring whipped a stray potato out of the pot and across the counter.

Daisy was so busy being perturbed at the soup, she didn't notice the smart way everyone snapped to attention behind her when Mr. Carson entered the kitchen. He stepped right up to the butcher's block, across from Alfred and Ivy, and unceremoniously laid down a parcel, his hands quickly fixing themselves behind his back like the package's brown paper was toxic to touch. Clearing his throat, he swung his severe gaze around the room as if in search of something, and then said, “Has anyone seen James? He's had another package in the post, though I don't –“

At the mention of Jimmy, Daisy flipped around, a dollop of soup flying off her spoon with the twirl. “Is Jimmy alright?” she worried aloud, realizing that she hadn't seen him since that morning either. He had been snoozing in Mr. Barrow's bed when she'd finally got around to sneaking away, and after all the grief she'd heard from him about getting a decent rest, she had elected to leave him as he was. He had looked just so natural lying there, it would have been a shame to disturb him. A small snort of mirth escaped her at the memory. Though Jimmy might have been quite at peace, he was hardly the most graceful sleeper: he snored with his mouth open, and he drooled a little; his usually perfect hair stood at hilarious angles when he drooped against the pillows.

Mr. Carson did not share Daisy's amusement. “ _ James  _ has not found it convenient to turn up for work today,” Mr. Carson informed her, his baritone voice clipped with annoyance.

“I had to do breakfast all alone, I did,” Alfred added, never shy to fluff himself up in front of Ivy when it was easy.

“Where, _fortunately_ , they serve themselves,” Mr. Carson regained control of the discussion with a very pointed glare at Alfred, which silenced him on the spot. “But we can't be expected to manage luncheon in such a state, much less tonight's dinner party. So if anyone could determine where he's got off to, it would be much _appreciated_.”

“You mean he's not in his room, Mr. Carson?” Ivy trilled, suddenly concerned. The knife in her hand almost slipped across her knuckle at her fumbled concentration.

“He weren't there this mornin', and he still weren't when Mr. Carson made me check again,” Alfred told her with a frown that very obviously denoted how bothered he was by Ivy's continued interest in Jimmy's whereabouts.

“Really,” said Ivy flatly, shooting Daisy another sordid look under Alfred's nose. “I wonder _why_ that is.”

“And _why_ , pray tell, Ivy, is that?” Mr. Carson interjected, not about to give an inch. He had not earned his position as head of staff without learning to latch onto the little tells that gave each and every one of them away. “Because if I find out you've been telling little lies on the behalf of certain _other_ members of this household, I'm sure Mrs. Patmore will let you _know_ just how _cross_ I'd be about it.”

Visibly balking at the threat of discipline, Ivy went into a panic. She jabbed her paring knife in Daisy's direction, nearly slicing the buttons off Alfred's waistcoat in the process. “Ask  _ her _ ,” she hissed in a catty tone. “ _ She  _ were the one gettin' all cozy with Jimmy last time anyone saw him. Before  _ bed  _ and that _ . _ ”

At once, Daisy turned a violent shade of rose red. More soup shivered off the tip of her spoon as she exclaimed, “I weren't doin' nothin' of the kind!”

Ivy behaved as if she had forgotten where she was, stabbing her knife point-down into the cutting board. It quivered upright in the wood much in the same way Ivy's fists quivered against the folds of her dress. “Is that so? Is that why you'll go skirtin' your chores to go kissin' on the stairs instead, eh?”

“I'd never! Jimmy's me friend! Now I'm not allowed to speak with me friends, is it?” Daisy huffed, insulted. She hated the way Ivy had to twist everything around to have her own way. “He talks to Mr. Barrow all the time, and that don't get anyone's knickers in a twist.”

“Unless the knickers in question belong to Thomas,” Mrs. Patmore muttered under her breath, which earned her a glower from Mr. Carson that was so sharp, she squeaked and rolled her eyes in the opposite direction to avoid the reprimand.

“He's not your _friend._ He's obviously just usin' you to get at _me,_ ” Ivy was saying to Daisy over top of Mrs. Patmore's sidebar, while Alfred started to look visibly distraught over the way his perfect moment with Ivy was so grossly unraveling. Still, Ivy kept on Alfred's far side, as if the tall ginger was some sort of shield, and went in for the kill, addressing Mr. Carson in a most undignified way: “Maybe you 'ought to take a look in the women's rooms if you're wantin' to find Jimmy. You could start with _hers_.” She tossed her head in Daisy's direction, to which Daisy stuck out her tongue.

At this point, Mr. Carson was pinching his nose, his eyes closed in exasperation. He looked to be counting out his patience in increments, and didn't speak until he had done so for ten full seconds. Then he said, “Please. I cannot have this bickering when there's work to be done. So if neither of you has anything to add, I'll be getting on – though it's looking grim for young James if he hasn't got a decent excuse for himself.”

Mr. Carson was reaching for Jimmy's package like he meant to pick it up and go, which incited something within Daisy. “He's not been well, Mr. Carson!” she cried, distressed by Mr. Carson's thinly veiled threat. Mr. Carson paused halfway through lifting the package, blinking at Daisy from beneath bushy eyebrows as though he'd just been delivered the shock of a lifetime. The kitchen was dead silent, and all of them were waiting for Daisy to explain herself, which she did, albeit sheepishly.

“Honest, Mr. Carson,” Daisy elaborated, clutching the spoon's wooden shaft with tightened fists. “He were tellin' me last night he hadn't had a good sleep in an age. I... I bet he's just gettin' a kip in somewhere.” She made a vague motion with the spoon, like she was narrowing the search down to only the entire house.

“ _Dai_ sy, what do you know?” There was a warning laced into the way Mr. Carson drew out the length of her name.

Daisy rolled her bottom lip into her mouth and bit down pensively, unsure what she ought to say. If she told Mr. Carson that Jimmy had spent the night drooling into Mr. Barrow's pillows, he'd most certainly start wanting to know  _ why  _ – and furthermore, what her part in it had been. She had a feeling that neither ghosts nor bad dreams would be enough to justify her midnight sojourn to the men's hall – especially if it was in Jimmy's company. But weighing up consequences on the spot was definitely not her forte, and the stress of it made her nervous. Instead, she blurted out, “I-Is that another package from Mr. Barrow?”

Mr. Carson was taken aback at the abrupt topic change. “It is,” he said slowly, narrowing his eyes as if there was some sort of trick to her question.

“W-Well, if y'like, I don't mind findin' Jimmy to fetch it to him and all,” Daisy offered in a fit of wild desperation. “Then you won't have to go overturnin' every blanket in the house tryin' to unearth him.”

“That would be _most_ irregular, Daisy,” Mr. Carson decided with frank justice. “And I wouldn't want to think I've put you in some sort of _awkward_ position should there be anything – ” here, Mr. Carson cleared his throat with pronouncement “ – _untoward_ about it.”

At Mr. Carson's decree, Ivy shifted her posture with smug satisfaction, and Daisy slumped with disappointment. She felt responsible for Jimmy's recent troubles, and had hoped that with a chance to find him before Mr. Carson did, she might tip him off before he got into any real trouble. More importantly, she remembered Jimmy's proposal to help her win Alfred's attention if she lent him a hand in solving the mystery of his bothered dreams – an offer which had suddenly become much more tempting than it had been the night before. Besides, if the package was indeed from Mr. Barrow, she certainly wanted to be present when Jimmy unwrapped it.

However, after taking a quick barometer reading of the room, Mrs. Patmore seemed to have other ideas for her assistants. Knowing that when it came to any of them, her word took precedence over even Mr. Carson, Mrs. Patmore overruled him with a flap of a pudgy hand: “Oh, I think even our Daisy can manage around the like of James. He's not got the proper  _ audience _ for anythin' worth worryin' about, I daresay.”

Not out for his first walk around the bend, Mr. Carson sent her another one of his gutted looks at the nature of her comment. Daisy furrowed her brow in confusion. “What d'ya mean by that, Mrs. Patmore?” she asked, somehow sure there was a joke in the air, but one that she had not been let in on.

Mrs. Patmore folded her arms, suddenly sounding very much like Mr. Carson as she barked at Daisy with a sharp spike in tone, “It means, 'Go on,  _ get _ !' Off with you!”

Daisy hopped into action immediately, flinging her spoon onto the counter and sweeping by Mr. Carson to scoop up Jimmy's package before anyone had a chance to change their mind. She hoped no one noticed the giddy smile of triumph that had overtaken her as she hurried out of the kitchen, Mrs. Patmore booming in her wake, “And be ready to work through your teatime. We've a large party tonight and we've got to be in top form!”

With everyone caught up in the craziness of midday duties, Daisy felt bold enough to climb the stairs en route to the men's hall, her gumption driven by her minor victory against Ivy.  _ This is the day you stop takin' it on the chin, Daisy _ , she told herself as she hiked up the stairs two at a time.  _ Today's the day you take some action! _

She was so self-involved, it was no surprise that she inevitably crashed straight into Jimmy himself, who had been flying down the stairs at such a breakneck speed, he had been close to skipping through the air with each step. The parcel dropped from Daisy's arms upon impact and thudded down to the previous landing as both she and Jimmy took a dazed moment to reorient themselves.

“Keep an eye out, eh?” snapped Jimmy with habitual annoyance as he immediately went into his routine of straightening out his appearance. He yanked the hem of his waistcoat, adjusted his cuffs and pulled a finger through the twirl of his fringe.

“Sorry, Jimmy. I were just – ahh,” Daisy trailed off as she backed down the staircase to retrieve the package. She stooped to pick it up and then pressed it against her chest with arms she crossed at the wrist, lifting her gaze back up to Jimmy, who still lingered above with a haughty air that would put even the most stately earl to shame. “Ev'ryone's in a right state about you, y'know,” she informed him, tentatively toeing the next step with the tip of her boot. “Did'ja at least manage to get a few winks in?”

Jimmy snorted and tossed his head, which completely undid any careful effort he'd put into his hair. “No, Daisy, I didn't, thanks,” he sniped tersely. He glanced up and down the stairwell, and even took a peek over the railing to check the twisting switchbacks that plunged into the Abbey's downstairs halls, and then skipped quickly down to the same level as Daisy. The whites of his eyes glistened as he got within whispering distance of her and hissed, “I'd reckon Mr. Barrow's room made it that much  _ worse _ .”

“How d'ya mean?” she asked with a slight tremble in her tone as that same maddened look that had possessed Jimmy the night before began to reappear on his face. To her, Jimmy being anything less than snarky and suave was far more unsettling than any ghost; the sight of it knocked the brave wind right out of her sails.

“How d'ya _think_ I mean?” Jimmy retorted, straightening once more to fold his arms unhappily, though his shoulders drooped just enough to indicate the defeat he felt. “There weren't nothin' helpful in there at all, and all I got for it were an even _weirder_ dream than the usual one. I'm at me wit's end.”

“Really? Didn't seem that way to me this mornin',” replied Daisy. “You were draped all over Mr. Barrow's bed like you owned it. Dead to the world were you!”

“And you didn't think to wake me up? Good job, then. Now I'm worse off than before, _and_ buggered to boot,” Jimmy snapped, his foul mood a thin veil for his anxiety. His darting eyes eventually latched onto the parcel, which he attempted to use as a diversion from the details of his morning. He indicated the package with a flick of an index finger, asking, “What's that?”

The pretense of her errand was enough to keep Daisy from feeling too low about Jimmy's mood. She thrust the package in Jimmy's direction, announcing brightly, “It's for you – straight from New York, care of our Mr. Barrow!”

The mention of Mr. Barrow had the opposite effect than what Daisy had expected: the blood warming Jimmy's cheeks went cold, replaced with a pallid, sickly hue, and his voice cracked from a dry throat when he tried to speak. Nonetheless, he reached out to snatch the parcel from Daisy, all the while mumbling to no one in particular under his breath. “It's stranger all the time,” was the only snippet of it that Daisy managed to gather, which of course lead to her natural impulse to be curious about it.

“D'ya mean William again?” she wondered, bravely weathering the dark glower Jimmy rewarded her question with. An intrepid breeze began to stir within her again, and she shrugged off Jimmy's attitude with a frank suggestion: “I really think you ought to try writin' Mr. Barrow about all this. He'd know much more about how to get William to settle down, I'd reckon. Or at least what he might be tryin' to tell ya!”

The continued focus on Mr. Barrow only incited Jimmy's agitation further. Tucking the package under one arm, he gracelessly swept down the steps, grabbing Daisy by the arm and pulling her with him as he passed her by on the landing. He again gave the stairwell a paranoid scan, and then dragged her through the nearby doorway, which diverted to the servants' passage behind one of the guestroom wings. The gray hall was gloomy and silent, gaunt with crooked shadows on the wall even in the fierce midday sun angling down through the windowpanes. He snapped the door shut behind them and whisked Daisy between two great linen wardrobes a bit further down the way in hopes that they were tucked as far out of sight as possible.

Gripping the parcel with stiff fingers, Jimmy leaned against one of the wardrobes and started relentlessly tapping the back of his skull against it as he confessed, “That's the  _ problem _ , Daisy: it's Mr. Barrow come to haunt me next. I swear, it were like he had never left that blasted room this entire time.”

At this, Daisy actually rolled her eyes and shook her head chidingly. “Mr. Barrow can't  _ haunt  _ you, Jimmy,” she told him with the same slowness one might use on a particularly thick child; “He i'nn't  _ dead _ . Can't haunt you if he i'nn't dead, in case you forgot how ghosts work.”

Jimmy knocked his head against the wooden paneling one last time before simply resting against it, sighing at the ceiling, “Then explain me why he's suddenly poppin' into me dreams like he's got no right to be, eh?”

No sooner had the question bounced off Jimmy's tongue did he have an answer – though it did not come from Daisy, but instead from the bowels of the Abbey itself, dripping from its cloistered shadows and rushing at Jimmy in a torrent of horror that only he knew. He sprung off the wardrobe in a panic and skittered into the middle of the hall, his eyes swinging wildly up and down the length of the corridor, trying to find some avenue of escape as, one by one, each of the sconces approaching him in either direction winked out in a burst of electric fizzle. In desperation, he tried looking to Daisy, but she flicked into darkness without any seeming awareness of what had warped his reality.

Standing alone in an arched square of daylight, which blazed through the narrow window that had been between the two linen cabinets, Jimmy pivoted on the balls of his feet, searching for any clue that he might still be dreaming. All he found was an elongated shadow amplified against the section of wall that was still marked by the sun. Except there was something misplaced about it – something that distinguished the shape from the familiar outline Jimmy was used to having at his heels. For one, the coiffure was slicked flatter than his usual, and the outline of the jaw too delicate; there was a large chunk missing where the left hand ought to have been – and it  _ slithered _ .

Jimmy leaped back at the discovery, an unsuccessful attempt to detach his soles from the shadow. It shuddered and morphed, gaining long appendages that crept much like the tentacles in his dream that always dragged him to safety in the guise of William's – or most recently,  _ Thomas's _ – hands. It became giant and otherworldly; it shrunk down to specks of drifting dust; it very pointedly sculpted itself back into its semi-human shape, which Jimmy suddenly had a very clear comprehension of as the echo of Thomas's voice reminded him:  _ 'Amazin' what you notice once you know to look for it, isn't it? _

Jimmy found himself screaming into the muzzle of Daisy's palm. The lights blinkered back to normal, and he was back in the nook between the linen wardrobes, where Daisy was on her tiptoes so that she could reach his mouth to stifle his outburst. “ _ Jimmy _ , what's got into you?” she was asking him with wide eyes; “Mr. Carson'll hear you if you go on wailin' like that!”

“Miss'r Carson's the leaft o'me conferns,” Jimmy lamented, muffled against Daisy's palm. His eyes blazed from beneath pinched and angled eyebrows, and she took her hand away to let him breathe his words properly: “Tell me it's imagination, Daisy. Tell me I've not completely lost the whole, _bleedin'_ plot!”

And Daisy, who kept a surprising amount of patience for things she had to take on faith, had only earnest assurance for Jimmy: “You're not on your own in it, y'know. I'd like to help you – I'm not afraid!”

“Daft is what you are,” Jimmy said tartly. He had turned his attention to Mr. Barrow's package again, which he had flung to the ground in his terror and still lay innocuously at his feet. He wished discovering the meaning behind all this new oddity was as easy as taking a pen to paper and composing a simple question that begged an even simpler answer. But life had been cruel in its lesson that nothing was ever so easy, and many were the instances in Jimmy's short time on earth that felt as though he was just short of drowning in his own troubles. The notion drew strength as he read and reread Mr. Barrow's name on the return address, somehow mired in all the nuances and complications that came with its spelling.

Meanwhile, Daisy had turned up her nose at the suggestion, just as oblivious to Jimmy's internal agony about Thomas as she was to the problematic variations that had begun to tweak his visions. “You didn't think I were so daft when I first told you about William and Mr. Barrow,” she pointed out, careless of whether or not Jimmy was actually paying attention to her. “And you didn't think I were daft when you dragged me up to Mr. Barrow's room last night, neither.”

“ _Shh!”_ Jimmy hissed, much more concerned about misplaced rumors than his earlier blowup. “That's somethin' different entirely. What I meant is that you _should_ be afraid. You should be absolutely gobsmacked is what.”

“But _why_?” Daisy protested.

Jimmy pretended not to heed her and busied himself with scooping the parcel back into the cradle of his arms and holding on to it like it was some sort of anchor to reality. Tightly, he said, “Because  _ I'm _ terrified.”

“ _You_? Terrified?” The idea of it was unbelievable to Daisy, who clapped a hand on each hip and made an incredulous face at him, her mouth wide at one end and crushed together at the other. “What has _Jimmy Kent_ got to be terrified of?”

It was hard to tell, but Daisy could have sworn that the word Jimmy grumbled under his breath was, “Everythin'.”

She swallowed her disparaging expression and gave him a second examination, noting for the first time that the tiredness in Jimmy's eyes wasn't the sort that was brought on by lack of sleep. Without Mr. Carson to tell him to snap to it, and his livery all out of sorts, this Jimmy wasn't the smarmy flirt that had Ivy dangling on a string:  _ this  _ Jimmy was defeated, rudderless and alone. Then she wondered if it really was the dreams that had Jimmy so haggard, and tried to reason out what other changes might have been creeping up on him from behind.

The clue that gave it away was pressed dearly to Jimmy's chest, rearranging the discombobulated pieces in a bit more orderly a fashion for her. She was sure to be kind when she pointed it out, since Jimmy seemed to get awkward any time it was implied he wasn't totally self-sufficient, and said, “I s'pose it's harder for you without your bezzie. Like two sides of a coin is you and Mr. Barrow!”

Briefly, Jimmy's glance flicked up from the package to Daisy's face, like he was expecting her to say something else about him and Mr. Barrow – a snide remark to already on the wind up – though Daisy couldn't rightly determine what more there was to it. Then again, Mr. Barrow was usually very defensive about Jimmy, so she supposed that perhaps Jimmy was the same about him in turn. She cocked her head curiously at him, wondering, “Is there sommat wrong with that?”

“Don't let anyone hear you say stuff like that,” Jimmy bristled at her, even as he squeezed the package even closer to his chest. Daisy only blinked at him with an expression that begged to know why, which Jimmy just couldn't bring himself to shatter with the distressing underbelly of the whole matter. It bewildered him to think that Daisy had somehow missed all the obvious mark that Mr. Barrow wore, especially considering how long she had known him.

“How're you so naive, yet so...” he trailed off, sidetracked by an internal debate over how exactly to phrase himself. Most of his word choices seemed obviously hypocritical, which only left him aggravated that, despite her scattered quality, Daisy could manage where he could barely keep his head above water.

But Daisy proceeded without heed, still stuck on Jimmy's strange doldrums. “You don't have to act all redblooded around me, Jimmy,” she assured him with earnestly clenched fists, blazing right ahead with her thought without any care for how much more prickled it was making Jimmy. “I don't see why a man can't miss another one just as dearly as anyone else.”

Jimmy wanted to be annoyed – he really did – but Daisy was so genuine in her wish, it actually charmed a smile out of him instead. Holding Mr. Barrow's parcel in arm did more than enough to remind him of how much he disliked being apart from him, though he supposed it had taken their separation for him to know it. At least when Mr. Barrow was home, he felt a little bolder about himself, which made life much more exciting. Lonely and sleepless was not his idea of pleasantry.

But he told Daisy none of that, still afraid to risk an improper rumor. “A shame we can't all see the world as you do, Daisy,” he sufficed to say as his cheeks started to catch fire. He aimed his nose back down at the parcel.

“Then we won't!” Daisy cried brightly. She reached across the gap that divided them and clapped her hands on either side of the package, startling Jimmy with her sudden exuberance. “Let's stay here and read more scary stories and all about Mr. Barrow's excitements in America. And we'll write down all the things we'll want to tell him when he gets back, or – or we'll put it all in a letter and send it on!”

Her unfiltered joy coaxed another smile out of Jimmy despite himself, but reality was quick to cash its chips before he allowed himself to be too taken in by it. “We can't do that,” he said with a reluctant air of responsibility. “We'll be sacked if we dawdle any longer.”

“Then we'll get sacked!” Daisy decided with a firm nod. “We'll get sacked and sail all the way to New York. We'll find our Mr. Barrow and chase ghosts and go on wild adventures! It'll be so lovely! Like a pulp novel!”

Jimmy took a moment to regard her carefully. Though he couldn't decide if Daisy had ever considered the grim reality of what being fired would  _ actually  _ entail, he still found himself wanting for such an escapade – appealing in its outright madness. If he were a less reasonable man, he might have thrown caution to the wind and made a run for it right then and there, desperate that he might escape back to the time when he could discern between the things that were safe, and the things that upset his telltale heart.

Daisy shook the package in his arms as if to jostle him out of his private reverie. His cheek crinkled with a small half-smile, and he ripped at a corner of the parcel. The catharsis of scissoring through the brown paper with his fingers soothed Jimmy's agitation, and his smile became more pronounced as he slid down the length of the wardrobe to settle himself on the floor like a child at Christmas. Attacking the parcel with gusto, brown paper and twine flew around him in torn curls scattered around him in a field of shredded scraps.

Daisy tucked her skirts beneath her thighs and immediately dropped to the carpet with Jimmy, scooting up against the wardrobe so that she could look over his shoulder as he opened the parcel. “I wish someone would think to give me nice presents like that,” she marveled as Jimmy finally unveiled a small bundle of magazines. He blindly handed the one on top of the stack to Daisy and then began to rifle through the rest on his own.

“Don't Alfred make little tarts and all for you sometimes?” Jimmy asked idly as he opened an issue of _Weird Tales_ for its first perusal. “I've caught him at it before.”

“For Ivy, yeah,” Daisy corrected him with a long sigh as she gave her own _Weird Tales_ volume a flick. A card fluttered from between the pages with the motion, distracting her attention as it got caught up in the folds of her apron. She picked it up curiously: one side featured a photograph of a seaside Ferris wheel, while the other revealed itself to be a message from Mr. Barrow. She dared to give it a peek, hoping it wouldn't prove too personal.

“Stupid sod doesn't know what's good for him,” Jimmy commented about Alfred in the meanwhile, notably eased by the relaxation found in reading. He flipped over a page in the magazine and said with the casual air of someone mentioning the weather, “We'll have to do somethin' about that.”

“About what?” Daisy had been so taken in by Mr. Barrow's postcard, she thought she'd been mistaken.

“You heard,” Jimmy replied genially. He licked his thumb and turned over another page, completely absorbed in whatever story had overtaken his fancy.

Daisy wasn't sure what she had done to suddenly win Jimmy's favor, but his acceptance was extremely gratifying nonetheless. She supposed there was a chance that Jimmy was just bargaining with her, and that any semblance of camaraderie they might have fostered was only superficial at best, but it pleased her nonetheless that she had managed it without having to fling herself at him the way Ivy had.

_ Or maybe it's 'cause Mr. Barrow and me get on, _ regarded Daisy as she dropped her attention back to Mr. Barrow's postcard. It made sense considering how selective both Jimmy and Mr. Barrow were about the company they both kept. Even just reading the underbutler's message for his fair companion cinched for Daisy what a selective crowd she had just stumbled in upon, and then felt a niggle of pride at the achievement.

_ Jimmy  _ [Daisy read in Mr. Barrow's elegant script] _ – this place is nothing like you've ever seen in England. You would have loved to come here. I think New York would suit you well. I quite like it myself, though I truthfully keep only eager thoughts of returning home. _

_Until then, best wishes – Thomas B._

_PS I tried the Ferris wheel all on my own – would you ever've thought it? It was grand._

Daisy turned the postcard back over to the photographic side. She had never ridden a Ferris wheel herself, but if the picture was anything to go by, it looked absolutely marvelous. She brightened at the thought of Mr. Barrow enjoying himself at an amusement park, though it was very obvious to her that he would've preferred to have gone with company. She had a good idea of who he had in mind.

“Jimmy, look'it,” she enthused, daring to tap Jimmy's shoulder. “Mr. Barrow's havin' a swell time after all!”

The annoyed expression that addled his features at the disruption was quickly stowed in favor of a blank one when he saw the postcard Daisy was presenting him with. Quickly, he snatched it from her and flattened it over the story he'd just been reading, holding aloft the half of the magazine that was nearest to Daisy to create a barrier between the letter and her roving eyes. Not that the effort mattered, since Daisy was too distracted by the rosy flush warming Jimmy's cheeks as he glanced over the postcard. He looked positively embarrassed, a detail he expertly covered up with a very crisp question: “You didn't go nosin' in on this, did you?”

Daisy balked, caught out. “Well, I didn't think it were so... uhh...”

“It's alright if it's just me who sees it, but _Daisy_ –“ Jimmy was uncannily emphatic, clapping his hand atop the one she still had rested on his shoulder. She was struck with the startling amount of gravity in Jimmy's eyes, which stormed blue beneath a severely knotted brow. “We've got a way about us, me and Mr. Barrow,” he started to say, though he faltered halfway through and seemed in want of better phraseology. “Just – s'not somethin', _well_ – it's our own understandin', see....”

Jimmy's halting sentences tumbled out, and Daisy just turned her head back and forth in confusion. “I don't see what you're on about, Jimmy,” she told him, wincing as he crushed her hand even more tightly against his coat. “There's nothin' wrong with your mate sayin' that he –“

“ _No_ , Daisy,” he huffed, pushing her hand off of his person with exasperation; “It's not that – not _just_ that, anyway.” He slumped back against the wardrobe, his grip on his magazine growing slack enough to let the postcard slip into Daisy's field of vision again. She was just trying to grab a quick reread of it when Jimmy started up again: “There's certain – ah – _things_ regardin' how Mr. Barrow sometimes talks to me that I don't mind but – but maybe other people wouldn't be so... so _kind_ about, if you catch me meanin' there.”

Wide-eyed, Daisy listened, unsure of how to react: it was really quite impressive how he managed to be so frank and so vague all at once. “I don't, really,” she responded slowly, careful to notice the nervous way Jimmy sucked his bottom lip as he stared down at the postcard.

Not particularly keen on debating the point further, Jimmy tapped the crown of his head against the wardrobe and rolled it in Daisy's direction, examining her sideways as he said, “Look, the point is just – I – I don't want our Mr. Barrow getting' in any more trouble on my account, alright? So just... just nevermind what he wrote.”

At this, Daisy became indignant, puffing her cheeks out with a trapped gasp of air, her nose wrinkled and her mouth a choleric shape upon her pale skin. “I can't and I won't!” she sniffed, closing her eyes and tipping her chin towards the ceiling. “It's lucky the way he thinks so fondly of you, tellin' about how much he liked ridin' the Ferris wheel and all. What's so horrible about that?”

“Yeah, lucky,” murmured Jimmy, disengaging into a silence so thick, it only came apart in slabs of loud breathing. Then, an unexpected thought came to Jimmy, and he clicked out of it with the whip of a snapped rubber band. “Wait,” he stiffened; “What?”

Daisy took her turn at droll vexation with a histrionic roll of her eyes. “The note, dummy,” she chided, leaning over Jimmy to pluck the postcard out from between the pages of his magazine, and then held it up with Mr. Barrow's letter facing him. The light shining through the above window bathed her hair in a yellow haze, but left the words painted in the hallway's gloomy hue. Jimmy squinted and tried to read the shaded text beneath the glare, but still found the message unchanged from before. It said:

_My darling, how I've missed you. This place is nothing like you've ever seen in England. You would have loved to come here with me – and I'd've loved to have you. I quite like it myself, but it feels empty without anyone to explore it with. I keep only eager thoughts of returning home to you._

_Until then, best wishes – Thomas B._

_PS One day, we'll come back here together. I'll look forward to it._

“See?” said Daisy after a sufficient pause. She bent her wrists back so that she could tilt the postcard's inscribed side towards herself, and when she did, Jimmy witnessed a curious happening: as the sunlight pouring in from behind her fell upon the ink, it began to contort into an entirely different message – one far less incriminating and suggestive than the one he'd _thought_ he'd just read.

A shudder clacked down the knobs of his spine, unnerved by the dichotomy. Certainly there were times – even after discussing the terms of their renewed friendship – when Mr. Barrow's particular  _ esteem  _ for Jimmy came glinting through his gruff exterior, but the point was that it was never overt – at least, Jimmy didn't think so. But this – this wasn't so easy to ignore, and it gave him palpitations.

With a wide swipe of his arm, he snatched the postcard from Daisy to inspect it more closely. He turned it this way and that, watching as Mr. Barrow's truths slid in and out of focus with the shifting light. If he'd ever wondered whether Mr. Barrow still thought of him  _ like that _ , then the mystery had been resolved. But if he was honest, deep down, Jimmy had always had a suspicion about it – that he'd always known Mr. Barrow's affections for him had never really abated, pomp and graces be damned. He might have found it flattering if it wasn't also the most terrifying aspect of their friendship.

Though he feigned indifference as he folded the postcard unimportantly and ferried it away to his inside coat pocket, Daisy could tell that Jimmy must have had another fright of some kind by the tension in his movements.  _ Maybe he's still half dreamin' _ , she mused, and quickly decided there was only one thing to be done if that was the case: she pinched him –  _ hard _ .

Jimmy, who had been in the process of piling up his new editions of  _ Weird Tales  _ like he meant to escape that dingy corridor as soon as possibly, promptly threw the lot of them in surprise as Daisy clamped a pair of fingers around a wad of skin on his bicep. Even with a layer of wool and linen between her tightened fingertips and his flesh, the pinch still smarted fiercely. Jerking his arm roughly away and rubbing at the bruised area with his other hand, Jimmy snapped, “What's the big idea, eh?”

“You were off in a daze,” Daisy answered with a shrug. “And I thought you might've _seen_ somethin'.”

“Seen somethin' – yeah, sure,” Jimmy repeated glumly as he went about collecting his magazines once more. Kneeling on all fours to reach the furthest-flung volume, the tails of his coat askew over his hips, Jimmy moved without guile – appearing to Daisy for the first time as the uncertain little boy hidden beneath a veneer of false confidence. “I wish I could go back to havin' me eyes wide shut,” he said as he crawled after the strewn magazines. “Why would you ever _choose_ to fall in with this sort of thing?”

“Why wouldn't you?” was Daisy's automatic reply.

“Because then there ain't nowhere to....” Jimmy trailed off, distracted as the postcard tumbled out of his inside pocket when he awkwardly reached for a magazine that lay in the middle of the passage. He plucked up the far-flung pulp rag and the postcard and then returned to his former position against the linen wardrobe with a sigh. He wished to God that everything didn't always seem to circle right back to Thomas Barrow as his gaze dropped back to the postcard, which he held under his thumb against the magazine his lap. Much to the shock of his pleading nerves, he was rattled to find that something about being stuffed into his coat had changed the message on the postcard yet again. A low vibrato began to quiver in the back of his throat at the discovery, rising in crescendo as he read the new phrase.

_That is not dead which can eternal lie,  
_ _And with strange aeons, even death may die._

The marks, which shimmered in an unreal hue that had seeped down out of space, then sunk into the postcard, resurfacing anew with conversational ease. A chill overtook him when he realized the script still bore the same finesse as Thomas's hand as it spoke to him like a whisperer in the dark.

_James – are you paying attention?_

With another unruly yell, Jimmy tensed and awkwardly scuttled back around to face Daisy once more, flinging the damnable postcard at her as he cried wildly, “I didn't  _ ask _ for any of this! Why can't I just be left  _ alone _ ?”

The postcard whirled like a top as it sliced through the air, nicking Daisy's bonnet as it sailed over her head and crashed into the wall behind her. She twisted around to pick it up, but found herself extending it to no one when she turned back towards the spot where Jimmy had just been. In his place was just his stack of magazines, forgotten in his haste to get away. From further down the passage, the dull slam of a door heralded his exit.

Alone in the nook, Daisy pinched the postcard with two pairs of fingers as she stared intently at the friendly correspondence from Mr. Barrow, quite unsure what was so complicated about any of it. If it had been Alfred aboard, and  _ she  _ had been the one to receive such a package from him, Daisy was certain she would have been nothing less than delighted to hear from him – and even more so if he'd thought to get her a gift.  _ S'pose Jimmy's just not used to havin' friends _ , she concluded after a brief pause. Then her speculation furthered:  _ Maybe that's why he and Ivy had their fall out – 'cause he's no good at leanin' on other people. _

That issue momentarily resolved, Daisy took time to clear up the remains of the brown paper wrapped that still littered the floor, careful to save the snippet that bore Mr. Barrow's return address in New York. Then she gathered up Jimmy's magazines, oblivious to the extra shadows that stood against the wall next to hers as she worked, and started back towards the kitchen, the extended length her dalliance already threatening discipline. She wasn't particularly concerned about getting an earful from Mrs. Patmore, though, still far too consumed with trying to understand what made Jimmy so afraid.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY HALLOWEEN1 I hope you found this weirdness fitting for the day! Have a good one! 
> 
> The couplet Jimmy reads on the postcard is from Lovecraft, but I won't say more less you wish to keep the mystery to it! Thanks again to everyone who's been putting up with this so far! 
> 
> PS  
> Slightly off-topic, but I have been preparing an original version of Sittin' On A Fence (my last fic) for publication with illustrations and such. I'll try to keep people posted here, but keep an eye on Tumblr for more; I'm likely going to set up its own spot online if that's something you're interested in. Thanks!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jimmy hallucinates during dinner.

 

Following the incident in the upstairs serving passage, things were so insanely busy by the time Daisy and Jimmy had both resurfaced, no one had the time to lecture either one. Amazingly enough, after having to take so much extra care with Alfred while he was working on his own, Mr. Carson actually seemed _relieved_ to have Jimmy back on task, and for once was affording him the respect a proper first footman deserved. He left Jimmy in charge of Alfred while they readied the dining room for the enormous party that was set to arrive that evening, and hurried off to stress over wine pairings, aperitifs and cigars.

Alfred, however, was not so easily distracted. “Where've you _been_ ?” he was determined to know as he laid out the Shore and Coggins bone china that had been selected for the evening. “It took Daisy an _age_ to find you. It weren't fair to leave me _and_ Ivy in the lurch while you dossed off.”

Jimmy, who was grouchily following behind with a measuring stick to assure that Alfred was leaving the appropriate sixty centimeters for each table placement as he went, carried on as if he hadn't heard. “Would it kill you to at least _pretend_ at gettin' this right?” he groused as he adjusted the distance between the charger and first knife of yet another setting. He fussed with the entire arrangement with a compulsion that might have even put Mr. Carson himself to shame.

Not particularly pleased that he was being ignored, Alfred laid down another plate with a very decisive _tonk_ before straightening to his full height and clearing his throat. “You've not been very kind, y'know,” he informed Jimmy, as if the fact were a surprising revelation. “About Ivy, I mean,” he added after a beat, not wanting it to be implied that Jimmy had ever been able to get under skin.

This time, Jimmy heard, but he continued to channel his annoyance into yet another verbal flogging. Snatching up one of the napkins, he shook it free of the diamond shape it had been folded into, complaining, “And who taught you how to bloody do napkins, eh? This looks like a blind four year old did it.” He made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat and flung the napkin at Alfred with a glare that boiled enough to have shattered all the crystal on the table. “You want to whine about fairness, you big dolt, then quit makin' me to pick up _your_ slack.”

For once, Alfred didn't stand down to Jimmy's bullying. “No need to be in a strop just because Ivy realized what a first-class _arse_ you are,” he snapped as he bent to snatch the thrown napkin off the carpet. He flicked his pale eyes up at Jimmy as he stood back up, eager to see the twist on the blond's face as he went for the jugular: “Figures why Mr. Barrow takes such a _fancy_ to you. Both the biggest wankers in all of Yorkshire, the pair of you!”

“You better feckin' _shut it_ if you know what's good for you – or _this_ wanker's goin' to end up with blood on his waistcoat,” Jimmy very nearly shouted at Alfred, who quickly rescinded his bravery with Jimmy's temper teetering upon dangerous. Even after sleeping in as he had, Jimmy was still far too exhausted to even pretend that he had the patience for Alfred's simplicity. “And if you have to know, I were only goin' with Ivy 'cause she were handy. I could replace her instantly if I wanted to.”

“Then why haven't you – if you're so slick, eh?” Alfred countered, unsure if it offended him or not that Jimmy had yet to do so. He was pleased that things had shifted in his favor because of what had happened between Ivy and Jimmy, but he was still unhappy that Ivy had to be hurt in the process. The sooner Jimmy moved on, he reasoned, the sooner Ivy would as well – or so he prayed.

“Because I don't _need_ to, that's why,” Jimmy answered, rapping the measuring stick against his open palm, bringing the flat wood against his gloved hand with bottled aggression. “What's it matter to you, anyway?”

“It doesn't!” Alfred bristled. He returned to laying the dishware, but the mood in the room had definitely become charged. They worked in silence, each as if he was in the dining room alone. Even when Alfred pulled out a chair and accidentally knocked one of its legs into Jimmy's shins, the blond only grunted without so much as a glance in Alfred's direction.

It wasn't until Alfred had laid the final setting and Jimmy had come around to make sure it was correct did the blond footman think to make any comment. He laid the measuring stick against the edge of the table and tightened the placement of each utensil and plate, and gave Alfred a delayed addendum to their earlier debate: “Besides, I've had too much on me mind to be worryin' about anybody else,” he said, a fork wiggling under his fingertips as he nervously slid it into its precise position from the charger plate.

Alfred had moved on to laying the name cards by the designated plate for each guest, but he paused in his task long enough to throw Jimmy's comment an incredulously arched eyebrow. “I'm not sure why that's different from any other time,” Alfred said, trying hard to sound tough, though he was only partially successful. “When have you _ever_ cared about anybody else?”

Jimmy made sure to let Alfred know exactly what he thought about that: “Excuse me, I find that offensive, ta.”

“Yeah?” Alfred stopped again, this time setting the tray of placards down on the nearby sideboard so that he could cross his arms in a show of disbelief. “Name one other person you'd give over for.”

The poise of Jimmy's mouth nearly betrayed the only name that didn't need to be thrown around in Alfred's presence, and it took a false, sputtering cough to swallow the only true answer Jimmy had to such a question. He quickly pasted his typical expression of distaste over his angelic features, and glowered in the wobbling candlelight at his taller coworker as he fearfully tucked Mr. Barrow back into the safety of his innermost thoughts. Then, in place of his fear of verbalizing Mr. Barrow's importance to the likes of Alfred, Jimmy grasped for the next available person that came to mind, and surprised even himself when he blurted out, “Don't mind that Daisy, if I'm honest.”

Thinking on it for a few moments, he supposed he was.

However, Alfred wasn't so easily convinced, scrutinizing Jimmy as though he'd just announced that he was descended from Christ, himself. Alfred squinted at Jimmy like he was trying to catch out some sort of fib in the blond's face. “Surprised you know Daisy were even _alive_ ,” Alfred accused Jimmy, who – strangely – wore no tells of insincerity in his expression.

“Could say the same of _you_ ,” Jimmy snorted with crossed arms and a toss of his perfectly curled fringe. “Which is quite stupid of you, considering.”

“What's _that_ s'posed to mean?” Alfred wondered, unsure if he should have been insulted or not.

“It _means –_ ” Jimmy emphasized with a forward step and a jabbed finger in Alfred's direction “– quit wastin' your time on a slapper like Ivy, that's what.”

Mirroring Jimmy's movement with a forward step of his own, Alfred was a scant few inches from his shorter coworker, creating a rather amusing scene as he tried to stare Jimmy down from his gangling height. “That's funny,” he said with calculated slowness; “Last I heard of it, it were _you_ who couldn't keep his hands to himself.”

To which Jimmy grew very ornery, poking a pair of fingers roughly into the bib of Alfred's shirt with enough force to knock him off balance: “What I do with me hands is no business of yours!”

Despite the fact that Alfred had been provoked to a point where he really wanted to have a go at Jimmy, he was saved from being strung up by Mr. Carson's unexpected return to the dining room. “Just _what_ is the meaning of this?” he demanded of the warring footmen as he stood at the head of the table, his features exaggerated by the amber candlelight. “Has the whole of this staff gone completely mad?”

“Just one of us, Mr. Carson,” Alfred had the cheek to say, shooting Jimmy an accusing glare.

The long, hard look Mr. Carson then gave Jimmy was almost enough to spook Jimmy's confidence. He could tell the elderly butler was mentally reviewing all of Jimmy's impertinence in the last twenty-four hours, which made him nervous – especially when all Mr. Carson had to say on the matter was: “I cannot believe I'm confessing this, but I should be glad to have Mr. Barrow back. He seems to have found the trick to keeping you _under control_ , James.”

Jimmy was glad the wobbling shadows flung from the table's twin candelabras sufficiently hid the redness that had attacked his cheeks at the comment. Mr. Carson, on the other hand, seemed to have been perfectly aware of how effective such an observation would be on the blond footman, and used the interim to remind them that guests would be upon them within a few hours – and that any more distractions would _not_ be received well. He left the room with a poorly concealed “ _Harumph!_ ”

“I can't wait to kick off to the Ritz, me,” muttered Alfred after he'd gone.

The dinner Lady Grantham was hosting that night was some sort of charity gathering that Jimmy didn't care enough about to know the details of. There were a wide variety of guests in attendance, and they came in a large number. Both Jimmy and Alfred were expected to be in top form, legging it from the front drive when they pulled up, to the dining room to serve the meal mere heartbeats later. It was the busiest the house had been since Lord Grantham had left for New York, and the exertion was quickly catching up with the sleep-deprived Jimmy, who only managed to keep awake because there was there was hardly an instant to even catch a breath.

Once the entrees had circulated and the party had settled into the typical chitchat that was common at these things, Jimmy and Alfred settled in their usual positions against the wall – a pair of handsome dolls that only moved when called upon and otherwise remained unheard and statuesque. The reprieve did not do to help Jimmy's exhaustion, even as he tried to distract himself with the pretty lady making eyes at him from the table. Black stars cut holes into his vision; he could barely tell if his eyelids had collapsed or not.

Ahead of him, in the dusk-tinted window, a soft reflection of twisting trees extended from the glass, across the room and slid beneath his shoes. Jimmy blinked – once, twice, three times – and soon found that he was no longer at Downton Abbey. The high-vaulted Jacobethan splendor of the Abbey had been substituted with spindled, iron porches, flat roofs and narrow windows; the light murmur of polite laughter replaced with the dirge of a melancholy brass band. The cobblestone street he stood upon was lined with crooked oaks dripping in a strange, spidery moss, which shaded a long march of people following a horse-drawn cart. They were an ethnically diverse group, and some carried umbrellas, others vibrant scarves, but they all wore their Sunday best – tailcoats and top hats, cravats and formal waistcoats. Jimmy watched the odd parade go by, wondering what it was for.

Then he caught sight of a familiar face.

There, walking just along the outskirts of the procession, was none other than Thomas Barrow, carrying a folded umbrella and wearing his favorite bowler. He had a pale belladonna stuck in the buttonhole of his coat. He glanced up at Jimmy as he passed by, offering him that private smile he kept between the pair of them. He touched the brim of his hat, saying, “Pay attention, James,” and Jimmy blinked at him – once, twice, three times –

“ _James_!” Mr. Carson snapped, suddenly right in Jimmy's ear. “Pay attention!”

Jimmy startled, almost surprised to find himself back in the Abbey's dining room, where Alfred had started to clear away the party's mains and was waiting for Jimmy to follow up behind. Embarrassingly, everyone was staring at him, and bore witness to the clumsy way he tripped over his own feet as he hustled to catch up with his ginger-haired coworker.

When they had made their lap of the table and had returned to their places, Alfred had the nerve to mutter something about the girl who had been sending flirty glances Jimmy's way, saying, “Maybe you oughta take up work in a dosshouse if you want to get paid for bein' so loose.”

“A real comedian, you,” retorted Jimmy without humor. “Maybe the Ritz needs a vaudeville man more than a cook.”

“ _Chef_ ,” Alfred couldn't help correcting Jimmy, and Jimmy sneered as he mouthed back, “What _ever_.” Mr. Carson shut both of them up with a pair of bushy eyebrows that arched so high on his face, they threatened to clear his receding hairline.

They snapped their shoulders back and lifted their chins, falling back to professional silence as the diners continued on to the next course. Jimmy wished he could have been stationed on the other side of the room, where he wouldn't have to field the continued attention from the young lady at the table. Then he wished he possessed that particularly fine look of derision that Mr. Barrow had; no one ever seemed to bother him – unless he wanted to be.

Tiredly, Jimmy forced his eyes over the top of the curls piled atop the girl's head, returning his concentration to the window with the faraway reflection. Another cascade of empty stars filled his sight, blotting out his own outline in the glass until it became another entirely. Jimmy's entire face hurt with the pain it took to keep his focus intact, but nevertheless, he still found himself staring at the spectral image of Mr. Barrow, who stood between the windowpanes with his umbrella as though he were waiting for Jimmy to get his coat and hat to join him for a walk. His lips were moving; Jimmy squinted trying to read the shape of them.

 _Pay attention, my darling_ . _Are you payin' attention?_

Fear gripped him – especially when he considered why his imagination was filling in such affection from Mr. Barrow, and thrice damned the secret message that had appeared on the postcard for making him remember the things that terrified him the most. He thought perhaps his exchange with Daisy earlier on had softened his head, but when he tried to blink himself back to rational sanity, he only found himself three winks away from that unfamiliar city street, this time walking shoulder-to-shoulder with Mr. Barrow as they followed the procession together. Through the eldritch moss hanging from the branches overhead, the sky was a balmy gray, pregnant with an oncoming drizzle.

The sound of the brass band leading the march wafted back towards Jimmy's ears. He glanced up at Mr. Barrow, who wore a calm, even expression, and asked the obvious question: “Am I _dreamin'?”_

Mr Barrow's reply was unhelpful, though it came paired with a soft chuckle. “If y'like,” he said casually, digging into the pocket concealed beneath his belladonna-crested buttonhole for two cigarettes, one of which he handed to Jimmy as if they were out on one of their typical smoke breaks.

Jimmy took the cigarette, surprised by the tactile warmth of Mr. Barrow's knuckles where their skin brushed. Such a sensation was different from the last dream, through which Jimmy had felt very outside of himself as he watched it play out. This one, however, with Mr. Barrow very much alive and conversational, was an unexpected deviation, leaving Jimmy to strain over what it meant – if it was even a dream at all.

 _Maybe this is real somehow,_ Jimmy thought as he moved with the crowd, careful to keep in step with Mr. Barrow all the while. _Or maybe it's not, and I'm dead._ Jimmy shuddered at the suggestion, which was alarmingly plausible in its simplicity.

Pinching the cigarette tight enough to crush its paper tubing, Jimmy then asked, “What're we even doin' here?”

For a few long moments, Mr. Barrow smoked in casual silence, framing the end of his cigarette with red lips that were contoured into a rather self-satisfied shape. The coiling smoke twisted from his mouth with a life of its own as it danced around his head and up towards the mossy trees. “It's a funeral, Jimmy,” he informed him, while simultaneously moving to unfurl his large umbrella – even though the rain had yet to fall.

He popped it open and held it over both their heads; Jimmy was surprised to discover that the underside of the silk canopy was a stunning azure color, traced with spiraling, ungeometric patterns that somehow all still fit together with their non-Euclidean symmetry. The umbrella's tattooed, blue belly shimmered like lapping waves as the hazy sunlight, which penetrated the moss tendrils drooping from the trees, filtered through the umbrella's cap. It took great will for Jimmy to tear himself from the mesmerizing patina to re-affix his eyes on Mr. Barrow, who gripped the umbrella's curved haft with pale, elegant fingers that seemed bright against the darkly polished wood. Jimmy swallowed, their shape no less arresting than the wild motif printed above.

He distracted himself by flagging down Mr. Barrow's lighter. He flicked his cigarette and asked, “Who's died?”

“Mm, someone dear, I s'pose,” mused Thomas, who didn't seem to think the detail was particularly important. He was a bit jaunty with the umbrella as they walked, a vague homage to the brass band leading the procession with the cart – which, as Jimmy peered at it more closely through the sea of top hats and parasols, he realized was a funerary coach laden with an oak coffin. Something about the way it was dressed in an eggshell white cloth gave Jimmy the impression that the corpse was an important one.

A low chuckle emanated from Mr. Barrow, calling Jimmy's attention again. “But then again, I s'pose they're always dear – to _someone_ ,” he continued around another lungful of violet smoke. “But in the end, all that's left is empty hearts and human parts.” Another soft laugh left Mr. Barrow, like he had just told a particularly clever joke.

“Didn't know you were such a morbid bloke, Mr. Barrow,” Jimmy expressed drolly. He puffed hard on his cigarette like the nicotine would help him divine an answer. The sensation of smoking was terribly visceral for even a waking dream. So was the plague of strange insects that swarmed him in the muggy heat; the incessant buzz of cicadas grated wildly in his ear.

“Morbid?” Mr. Barrow swung the umbrella festively, a gesture which seemed to be a common tradition among the other processors. “ _Life's_ morbid, Jimmy,” he said just as someone else in the crowd jostled up against him. Mr. Barrow elbowed the person with an annoyance that translated into his words: “And isn't it worth celebratin' to finally be done with all that business?” He tilted the umbrella's crowning spike towards the head of the procession, adding, “I'll salute that good fortune any day.”

Jimmy didn't share the same opinion. With downcast eyes, he grumbled, “You've got a funny idea of good fortune, Mr. Barrow _.”_ He sucked harder on his cigarette, pondering the notion. He still wasn't sure he understood.

“Do _you_ know good fortune, Jimmy?” Mr. Barrow asked, glancing down his angular cheek at him. “Because I'd say you're quite lucky. In a pinch.”

“What's lucky about any of me?” Jimmy complained, wedging the filtered end of the cigarette tightly into the corner of his mouth so that he could jam both his hands into his pockets. “About any of _this_? I hate this! I wish it'd all just _go away_.”

As he spoke, Jimmy dared to peek at Mr. Barrow just in time to catch the hurt that registered across his features, like Jimmy's malcontent had directly upset him. Mr. Barrow didn't often look so forwardly saddened – at least, not that Jimmy had ever seen – and it distressed Jimmy in turn as he self-flagellantly tried to unravel what he'd said. He wanted to apologize, but he had no idea what for, so he instead found himself filling the air with half-realized thoughts that floundered with articulation.

“I – I mean, I just don't know what makes me so special,” Jimmy finally concluded as he spat out the dwindling cigarette and walked over it, crushing it into the cobbles. “None of this was ever a problem before – could sleep through the end of the world, me. Now, I'm afraid to even blink.”

“Oh, darling,” said Mr. Barrow in a way that made Jimmy's chest constrict; “But you _are_ special. Quite special, indeed.”

As usual, Jimmy felt the tug between the sort of exciting danger about Mr. Barrow, and the carefully manicured control that he so much preferred. He very pointedly turned away from the underbutler, instead distracting himself with the houses they passed by as they became shorter and less grand, though still vaguely French in design. “Don't make me question your tastes, Mr. Barrow,” Jimmy threatened evenly, though his tone was not unkind.

“It's not me taste in question,” Mr. Barrow answered genially – a graceful sidestep of the unspoken topic. He passed the umbrella from his centermost hand to the other so that he could reach out and grab Jimmy by the wrist, his cool fingers calloused in a way that Jimmy had not expected them to be. “Pay attention,” Mr. Barrow murmured as the slender digits tightened around Jimmy's wrist and pulled.

The brush of Mr. Barrow's flesh against his was even hotter than before – to a point where it burned like ice. The touch sizzled through Jimmy and burst right through his heart with a massive sound that knocked the sight right out of his skull.

With the sudden din of canon fire, the haunting spectacle of Jimmy's recurring nightmare in the trench flashed before his eyes. He stood surefooted with his wrist still clasped in Mr. Barrow's hand as the familiar terrain quaked beneath their polished oxfords. The underside of Mr. Barrow's umbrella cast an eerie glow that tinted their cheekbones and noses an unearthly blue and cut a many-tendriled shadow into the shift ground at Mr. Barrow's toes. Jimmy followed the shape into the heart of the trench, where the doom of Lyle Totten was being executed with bloody clarity.

Jimmy's stomach burned; his heart felt like it was slowing down. Mr. Barrow readjusted his hold to grab Jimmy's hand properly, and the monstrous shadow that slithered outside the cut of his form spread further, swallowing the pair of them in a bottomless well of darkness. As the sensation of falling (or perhaps it was drowning – he wasn't quite sure) overtook Jimmy, a powerful wind kicked up through his core – an ebon zephyr to blast them through an ocean of ancient constellations only they knew.

“Don't worry, Jimmy,” said Mr. Barrow as they drifted through the crawling chaos, which bled starlight in thousands of neon pinholes, yet ebbed and flowed with the fluidity of the sea. “Y'know I like to keep an eye out.”

The words allowed Jimmy a familiar safety in Mr. Barrow's presence, and though he would have never dared admit it aloud – even in dreams – it comforted him all the same as silhouettes, all ghoulish and unmentionable, slid through the spaces between the stars. The mutterings that filled the air reminded Jimmy of the cicada hum he'd heard at the funeral, yet the sound was unearthly – like a deranged symphony – but he felt confident that there was nothing to fear if he had Mr. Barrow to rely on.

Turning his chin towards the underbutler, who was still curtained in the sharp blues cast by his umbrella, Jimmy felt brave enough to ask, “Keepin' an eye out for what?”

Mr. Barrow's eyes crinkled warmly as he opened his mouth to speak –

“Pay attention, James!” Jimmy suddenly heard Mr. Carson repeat sharply. He looked down to find his face warped in the curving body of a pewter teapot as it steamed atop a serving tray, Mr. Barrow and his weird umbrella nowhere to be seen. In his place, Her Ladyship was perched at the edge of a sofa in the drawing room, waiting for him to approach with the brew. She was a scant few steps away, yet the room stretched like she was at the other end of the world. The room's gold filigree seemed garish; the electric lights burned the black stars permanently into his eyes. Beneath his soles, the carpet seemed squishy – damp even. A few more paces that got him nowhere brought him through water that had risen up to his knees, his hips, his elbows –

Jimmy was drowning again, this time gasping as he fell through an underwater ruin that looked like it had been torn right out of one of his _Weird Tales_ magazines. The barnacle-crusted architecture was massive and bore distressing carvings of demonic cephalopod creatures and depicted strange, evil myths that ran a shudder down Jimmy's spine. The silence was deafening, like he was intruding on a place he wasn't supposed to. Somewhere in the murky water, Jimmy got the impression he was being watched by sleepless eyes.

His lungs filled with water, and he choked, his ears suddenly ringing with the rattle of the tea service upon the tray in his shaking hands. Someone was saying his name, asking if he was quite alright. The electric lights were burning his vision again, and all Jimmy could think about was how much he'd like to lay down and close his eyes for at least a few hundred years. He blinked again, desperate to force himself back to wakefulness. The skin around his eye sockets hurt.

One, two, three blinks – and the drawing room was becoming overgrown with twisting oaks streaming with tangled moss. The furniture and the people occupying it were becoming lost in brambles; headstones broke through the oriental rugs, a rusted iron fence poking through the wooden floor. Before Jimmy knew it, he'd been transported from Downton once again, landing this time beside an open grave that was waiting to receive the coffin he'd seen riding the funerary coach earlier. A garden of wilted candles, rooted in wax puddles atop the surrounding gravestones, dotted the gray air with prickles of fire.

The jazz band that had been leading the way surrounded the white-shrouded coffin; Jimmy stood with them, noticing for the first time that the tea tray had been replaced with a trumpet. He stared at it in amazement, unsure how he was expected to play an instrument he'd never tried before in his life.

Mr. Barrow stood at the front of the spectating crowd, his strange umbrella closed and resting beneath his folded hands like a cane. He was smiling such that he stood out from the humdrum faces that flanked him – the soft expression akin to a light that attached itself to only him from across the way. Jimmy was unable to tear his gaze from him, arrested, haunted – _enraptured_ – by the mere sight of him.

“Little white boy goin' t'play or what?” came a Creole accent to Jimmy's right. He turned to see a woman wrapped in fabulously patterned robes standing beside the coffin, her hair hidden beneath a vibrant head scarf. She held a curious bone rattle in one hand and a bell in the other; hanging around her neck was a leather satchel embossed with mysterious symbols and a coiling albino snake that hissed at Jimmy with its needled tongue. She stared at Jimmy expectantly until he reluctantly lifted the trumpet to his lips, terrified of what would happen when his inability to blow a tune became clear.

Squinting his eyes, Jimmy puffed his cheeks and squeezed out a breath that funneled from the trumpet in a slinky note that fell in with the burst of jazz exploding from the rest of the band at the Creole woman's dictation. The tune was the familiar standard _The Saint James Infirmary_ , but the music carried something incorrect about it – something both maddening and unforgettable. Jimmy's fingers pumped the trumpet's keys as if they were being manipulated by an unseen force. The sun, blotted out by the rain clouds above, burned out entirely, bathing the world in an unholy purple flecked with the reddish kiss of candle fire.

The woman with the snake had begun to dance with the two noisemakers she held, her movements wild and unfettered by any sort of law. Her brown lips were turned up to the black-pearled heavens as she undulated, possessed; the whites of her eyes shone like twin lamps in the chromatic darkness. Bare feet pounded the raw ground with the clink of seashells, and Jimmy's fingers fluttered across the trumpet with the rising urgency of her movements. One by one, each of the candles winked out, replaced by the celeste impressions of wandering souls. Jimmy quickly noticed Lady Sybil, and – of course – William, who was hovering between two other soldiers in the fade: one of them was Matthew Crawley – but the other, whose wrists and face were mangled beyond recognition, was a stranger to him.

More ghosts crowded the space as the dancer grew more frenzied, their transparent forms drifting among the other funeral goers as if they had all come to welcome the soul of the newly dead into their arms. The music spun to a crescendo, an the woman threw her arms about as if she meant to open the coffin, even as she spun on her heels ten meters off. The shroud covering the box slipped off at once, pooling onto the ground in a heap of ivory folds. Then the lid of the coffin began to levitate above the oak box. An hysteric cry began to rise from the funeral-goers in a language that was not born of human throats.

Jimmy's cheeks stung with fervor as he trumpeted more intensely, entranced by the rite that seemed to be fueled by the intensity with which he and the other band members played. He strained to catch a glimpse of the corpse lying inside. The sound that escaped his trumpet transformed into a scream.

Inside the coffin was Mr. Barrow, pale and dead.

With wild eyes, Jimmy ripped his eyes away to search out the crowd. He was almost more horrified to discover that Mr. Barrow was still standing at the fore, acknowledging him with a finger against the brim of his bowler. Jimmy turned back to the body, certain that there was a mistake, but it was not so. The trumpet fell limply to his side as he was drawn towards the coffin with feet that did not walk of his own accord.

Inside the box, dead Mr. Barrow lay wreathed in more belladonna blooms, his lips poised in a faint smirk that was tinged a paler hue than their usual deep luster. Threaded through his elegant fingers was a green ribbon that looped through the bow of a silver key, which hung over his knuckles. A stray wisp of his ebony hair lay across his white brow; Jimmy extended a quaking finger to push it back with the rest of Mr. Barrow's neatly arranged coiffure.

As the pad of his thumb slid across the icy skin, Mr. Barrow's lifeless eyes snapped open and pinned Jimmy with their intense stare. “'Til human voices wake us – and we drown,” said the unliving Mr. Barrow.

It was finally too much for him: Jimmy pressed his eyes closed so that he wouldn't have to look at Mr. Barrow lying in that coffin anymore – a nightmarish image that disturbed him so immensely, it gave him the same discomfort as thinking about the war. An enormous clatter then rang around him, hushing the insane music so that all there was to hear was the volume of his scream. Someone was repeating his name desperately. A hand landed against his shoulder and he recoiled, his lashes blurring the topsy turvy environment around him. The voice sounded a lot like Alfred.

His eyes widened long enough to catch Her Ladyship staring at him with an open mouth, touching the large zircon ring she wore against her bottom lip. Then he fainted in the middle of the drawing room with only the swirls of the oriental rug to catch him when he toppled to the floor.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dunnduunduuuuun! I don't think there's anything to report here except for thanks for reading! I'm about to hit finals week and it might mean I have to pause on the posting for a week to keep up! If you even miss it at all :P


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jimmy's descent into madness reaches its peak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry that this is slightly unedited and grossly late. I accidentally deleted about thirty pages of fic so I'm not as far ahead as I usually am. This last term was also really rough on me, so I had a hard time making up for it. Anyway, this chapter ended up being really long, so I hope that makes up for it!
> 
> There's a lot of self-referential Lovecraft stuff in here. You might play detective if you want a leg up on what's going on here ;D 
> 
> Thanks again for reading. I hope you guys still like this insanity.

 

Word of Jimmy's accident spread quickly through the house, and for the week that followed – all through which Jimmy had been confined to his bed – it was the premier topic of conversation below stairs. Dr. Clarkson was called to see to Jimmy's mysterious condition, but he could find nothing about the virile footman that a little rest shouldn't have cured. Rumors circulated. By the end of the week, the older staff was wondering how far into his cups was Jimmy Kent, while the younger ones – hallboys, mostly – were certain that the blond had been bewitched. No one knew for sure: Jimmy hadn't spoken a word for days.

During teatime, Daisy was preparing a tray with a pot of brew and some leftover snacks, while Alfred loomed nearby, watching with folded arms and an unreadable frown. “He's not goin' to eat it,” he commented as he watched Daisy arrange two slices of bread around a small jam jar. “It's not worth the effort.”

“That's not very nice,” Daisy admonished, sucking her teeth. She kept attention chained resolutely to the tray, refusing to even give Alfred an inch of her focus lest he catch the flush in her cheeks. He didn't want her to think she was bothered – even though she very much was.

“ _He's_ not very nice,” Alfred replied tartly. He tilted his chin back and recounted miserably, “Y'know, yesterday he – “

But Daisy had already heard the story many times before, and from more than just Alfred. “Yeah, yeah. So he threw a teacup at Ivy – so what?” she finished for him with a clipped edge. “There're days I'd like to do just the same, I would!”

“You've been talkin' to Jimmy too much lately. He's got you all sour on Ivy,” Alfred groused as he watched Daisy pile a rather generous helping of biscuits onto a small dish, noticing the way she was taking special care to predominantly choose ones coated in confectioner's sugar.

A biscuit crumbled in Daisy's hand as her fingers tightened around it. Smearing the crumbs onto her apron, she finally turned around to face Alfred, saying sharply, “Did it ever occur to you that maybe I've got me own opinions for me own reasons? You – you  _ lummox _ !”

“ _Definitely_ talkin' to Jimmy too much,” Alfred repeated tersely, quite unused to such attitude from Daisy. “You sound just like him.”

“Since when did _you_ care?” Daisy asked as she returned to loading the tea tray with even more biscuits, missing the way Alfred was staring at her back as she worked.

Shocked, Alfred stammered, “I – I  _ care _ !” When Daisy didn't immediately respond to him, he tried again, very anxious that he'd done something wrong. “I just – well – you saw the way Jimmy charmed our Ivy and – well, y'know... I'd just worry he's tryin' to do it to you now.” He steepled his fingers awkwardly and stared at his shoes through the diamond his folded fingers created; “Y'know, 'cause it weren't so nice. What he did to Ivy and that.”

“ _Maybe_ ,” Daisy whirled around again, jabbing a finger in Alfred's direction; “Just _maybe_ Jimmy were tired of feelin' like he were a bleedin' trophy, eh? Maybe he'd like to be around somebody who likes him for more'n just his pretty face!”

“So you _do_ think he's pretty!” Alfred exclaimed, missing the point entirely. Daisy grunted in irritation and stalked around him, heading towards the sideboard to rifle through one of the drawers.

Alfred tracked her movements as she went, continuing with misplaced caution: “And I s'pose you're thinkin'  _ you're _ that somebody, is it?” He widened his mouth with the intention of telling her the one secret about Jimmy he had been witness to – the one he'd stumbled in on in the middle of the night after his first date with Ivy – but he quickly retracted, afraid to give such dark business any more attention. Instead, he summarized, “I'll have you know that there's quite a bit Jimmy ain't tellin' you.”

Daisy paused in her search through the drawer long enough to throw over her shoulder with a glower, “Now  _ you  _ sound like Ivy, you idiot.”

“Excuse me! You _do_ know he took complete advantage, didn't he!” Alfred protested as he pressed his shoulders back and tugged the hem of his tailcoat. “Seein' a poor, starry-eyed lass and thinkin' he could have his wicked way with just a little milk 'n' honey. Too used to havin' his own, spoilt way, that Jimmy Kent is.”

“And what makes that different than the way Ivy does you?” asked Daisy as she finally came across the object of her hunt. She removed a small bundle of magazines and slammed the drawer shut, tucking them preciously under her arm as she sent Alfred another upset glare. She was glad he seemed completely out of joint at her behavior. She went back to the tea tray and then carefully positioned the magazines between the tea set and the plates of food she'd already laid upon it. “If you think Ivy were stupid to fall for the likes of Jimmy, then I don't know _what_ that says about you. Talkin' about prize catches and that,” Daisy told him frankly as she fussed with the magazines. “At least Jimmy's not afraid to be himself.”

“Then I don't think you know Jimmy very well at all!” Alfred told her with no reservation in disdain.

“And you _do_?” Daisy demanded, boisterously picking up the tea tray like she meant to ferry it away on her own.

“I know him a sight better'n you!” Alfred snapped rigidly, and then realized he was talking to Daisy's back as she started to leave the kitchen with the tray. “Oi – where're you off to?”

“Fetchin' this to Jimmy – _obviously_ ,” Daisy said without even glancing back, even as the clop of Alfred's feet resounded after her.

“You can't! Mr. Carson'll never let you down the men's hall,” Alfred reminded her, though there was an air of desperation to his tone.

Daisy stopped, her knuckles white as she gripped the tray's handles tightly. It annoyed her that Alfred didn't seem to appreciate her presence until she had other ways to occupy herself. Still, she didn't trust herself to look at Alfred even as she laid down the law: “If you're so worried about me spendin' me time with Jimmy, then mayhap you shoulda thought of that before you tripped over your big, stupid  _ feet  _ the minute Ivy came cryin' to you!” Then she let out a loud groan of aggravation and stomped off towards the stairs, practically daring Alfred to try and stop her.

Her climb to the attics was fueled by righteous irritation. The way Alfred was acting was terrible enough, but it was even worse thinking that everyone automatically made the most ungenerous assumptions when it came to Jimmy. She decided that the best course of action was to care as little about it as possible. Such an attitude seemed to be how Jimmy got on well enough, and since she'd given it a trial, she had felt a new burst of self-confidence.

Reaching the door to the men's hall, she boldly strode down the corridor like she had just as much right to be there as anyone else. A passing hallboy gave her a sideways look as he went by her with a broom, but Daisy continued scanning the door placards in search of Jimmy's without flinching. She soon found the his dorm at the end of the hall, across from the room that belonged to Mr. Barrow. Balancing the tray long enough to give two warning knocks, she pushed into the blond footman's room with a forwardness that she had learned from none other than Jimmy himself.

Daisy hadn't been sure what to expect when she found Jimmy, but it certainly wasn't the giant lump of quilts and blankets that stretched down the length of the little cot. A tuft of golden hair poked out from the top of the lump, just barely visible beneath a stack of pillows. Daisy neared the bed, worried Jimmy was suffocating beneath the weight of all that wrapping, and laid the tea tray on the seat of a nearby chair. Then, she tentatively reached out to poke the mound of bedding, which started to tremble nervously at the creak of her shoes against the floorboards.

“Jimmy?” Daisy tried carefully. “Jimmy, are you hungry?”

Her voice caused a different sort of stirring from beneath the blankets. A flailing hand slid out from within the cocoon, parting the blankets enough to reveal a drooping blue eye, which shone strikingly beneath the folds. It blinked at her curiously and then was whisked back into oblivion as Jimmy snapped the coverlets back over his face.

“It's just me. Alfred's banned from bringin' you tea,” Daisy said reassuringly, even though she had no way of actually ensuring such a thing. With a decisive nod, she added, “It were an executive decision.”

The lump shifted thoughtfully.

“Well, more like it were _my_ decision,” Daisy rambled on, unsure what else to do in the spaces left by Jimmy's continued silence – which was wholly unnerving to her. “You'd think he'd never had a shock in his whole life the way he's been on about you.” With agitated hands, she started pouring Jimmy a cuppa over the tea tray balanced on the desk chair. She stirred in a healthy splash of milk and unloaded about six lumps of sugar too many into the brew, whirling it furiously with a spoon: “Anyway, it's not goin' to help you get better, his bein' mardy, that is.”

The mass of coverlets shuffled, growing large around the middle as Jimmy rearranged himself underneath. Daisy nearly dropped the teacup when Jimmy suddenly flew into an upright position and hurled the blankets back to reveal his shaken, haggard form. Clad in pajamas that hung unevenly off one shoulder, he sat on his heels and stared at Daisy with eyes that were ringed in shadow. His hair was molded by unwashed pomade, which made his hair spike unnaturally against his head like an uneven, blond crown. There was something unspoken burning in his countenance, but his cherubic lips remained still.

Swallowing, Daisy almost lost her nerve, finding his hollow expression even more unsettling than his wordlessness. “I-It  _ will  _ get better,” Daisy insisted as she nervously held the teacup out to Jimmy, who made no move to accept it. “Whatever it is that's happened, it's  _ happened _ , so no use muckin' about in it,” she tried again; “We all just want you to feel  _ better _ , Jimmy – honest!”

Jimmy might as well have been peering into an empty void with the distant way he looked back at Daisy, barely wincing. Daisy twisted around to examine the wall behind her, determined to catch out whatever it was that had captured Jimmy's attention. All she found was his wash basin and vanity mirror, both splashed in a bright square of afternoon sun.

“What's it, Jimmy?” she wondered as she returned her gaze to him. He had shifted slightly, now sitting on the edge of the bed and reaching for the tea tray. He ignored all the food in favor of picking up the magazines, which he loaded onto his lap and fixed his eyes on with dumb fascination. He traced the edges of the pulps like the feel of it drummed up some kind of memory; the faintest glimmer of a smile touched his mouth.

Daisy refused to treat Jimmy the way Alfred and Ivy had done, winding him up and then stomping off when he became too frustrating. It was obvious that Jimmy was begging for help with a voice that didn't know how. She'd spent enough time listening to Mr. Barrow to understand that sometimes the loudest cries were hidden beneath the darkest shadows. It was enough to work out that Jimmy was screaming for help – even as he fidgeting in continued silence.

“C'mon – you can tell us,” she said quietly, taking note of the way even just holding the magazines seemed to please Jimmy. “I'm no Mr. Barrow, but I can do me best.”

The reference to Mr. Barrow drew something out of Jimmy. At once, he cupped his face into his hands and started to quiver with the pulse of a violent emotion. Hot, unbidden tears dripped over his round cheeks and mingled with the mucus glistening on his upper lip. Audible gasps slurped down his throat as he tried in vain to settle. His distress was palpable, his lips twitching around unknown words.

Realizing she might be close to pulling an explanation out of Jimmy, Daisy floundered for the right prompt to get Jimmy to reveal himself. It wasn't doing anyone a lick of good for him to remain mute and trapped up in his room until Mr. Barrow came back. Mr. Carson wouldn't have the patience for a minute of that – that all Jimmy needed was for his best friend to stave off the ghosts of Downton Abbey. The notion would have been laughable if it also wasn't deadly serious.

“Right, well, it'll be any minute Mr. Barrow comes right through that door t'see you,” she said, fairly certain she was on the right track. She reached for the plate of biscuits on the service tray and offered them to Jimmy, who made no move to accept them, so she anxiously started nibbling at them herself. “You just have to be brave a little bit longer, right? There's nothin' to be afraid of.”

At last, a raspy mumble left Jimmy. “He's dead,” came the faint whisper, his diction stalled and gruff, tarnished from nearly a week of disuse. He twisted at his pajamas with wringing hands, blond fringe wisping over his brow as he hung his head in defeat; “He's dead and I don't know what I'll do.”

Certain she had heard incorrectly, Daisy paused in her consumption of a particularly crumbly biscuit to comprehend what Jimmy had just told her. A sugary dust coated the fingers she held over her stuffed mouth as she fought to swallow quickly. “I'm sorry, but  _ what _ ?” she gasped, still not sure she understood.

“Thomas,” said Jimmy without his usual care for Mr. Barrow's propers. “I dreamed he were dead, and when I woke – when I woke, I just... just –“ Grief consumed him once more, momentarily hushing him as he crushed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets in an effort to hold back the tears that had begun to well up once more. His lips pulled unattractively around his gnashed teeth, his continued speech riddle with more sobs: “When I woke up, I just _knew_ it were t-true,” he said, unable to swallow his fears any longer. “He's been in me dreams 'cause he's got himself hanged or bowled over by a lorry or somethin', and now he ain't ever goin' to come home!”

For her part, Daisy was almost too shocked to know what she ought to say. She knew better than to discount the things that occurred in dreams – it was one of Mr. Barrow's chief principles – but she also couldn't sit back and allow Jimmy to drive himself mad over something so extremely wild. “It can't be,” she tried to reason with him; “Mr. Barrow's survived much worse than  _ America _ , hasn't he?”

Jimmy's only reaction was to draw his feet up against the edge of the mattress so that he could bury his nose between his knees and blubber inconsolably. The childlike sight of it was easily one of the most unexpected things Daisy had ever seen in her life, so certain was she that Jimmy had never spent a single second of his without bleeding casual indifference. She'd have assumed that Jimmy was passionless and generally bored with life, except for the way he'd come so undone at the thought of losing his best friend. She supposed she ought to have known better, though: most people assumed the same thing about Mr. Barrow –  _ incorrectly _ , she had to add – so of  _ course _ was just the same with his bosom buddy.  _ And of course it would be devastatin' to think you'd have to go on without your kindred half, _ she concluded with a private nod to herself.  _ Of course he's in a right mess! _

She decided it was her role to try and reason with Jimmy, to help him see how illogical it was for him to jump to such a conclusion without any real proof. It had, in fact, been Mr. Barrow who had taught her that there was nothing in the world that was haphazard, even if it seemed that way in the limited understanding of humans.  _ “It's as simple as that, _ ” he'd said the first time she'd heard William haunt the piano;  _ “Whether you can see who's playin' it or not, someone's still got to  _ _ play _ _ it. It don't just wind itself up and all – that's impossible. But once y'see it, how could you ever not?” _

So she set aside the biscuit plate and reached forward to pat Jimmy's shin in an effort to call his attention. As she did so, she said, “There's absolutely no reason to believe that it weren't just a mad nightmare! You said yourself that you've been havin' the most wild dreams lately, right?”

“This one were different,” Jimmy moaned, muffled by the barrier of his folded legs. “Th-This one were so – so  _ real _ .”

Daisy almost reiterated that dreams were still just  _ dreams _ , but she bit down on the thought before it had a chance to escape her. Instead, the notion was replaced with a wave of understanding, and she let out a long hum: “That's what did it, eh?” she assessed quietly. “That's what gave you such a bad turn.”

Jimmy nodded morosely, leaving them at a silent impasse for a few moments until he had the gumption to say more. “You think I'm mad,” he murmured as he released his knees and let his feet dangle back over the edge of the bed, his toes turned inwards upon the threadbare carpet beneath the cot. “I don't know – probably I am,” he went on, addressing the floor as his thumbs twisted around one another in a frenetic dance. “I can't rightly tell anymore, me.”

Daisy wasn't sure how to react. She didn't want to agree that Mr. Barrow had met some kind of unfortunate end, but she didn't want Jimmy to feel so unhinged either. Carefully, she moved towards the bed and carefully perched beside Jimmy in a show of friendliness, and waited for him to perhaps tell more. Whatever it was that had unmade him, she was sure it would at least do for him to talk about it – since clearly he'd not had anyone to expound his troubles to since the incident.

“It's like I've been colorblind – seein' the world I always knew in all the wrong ways,” Jimmy said at length. He stopped his nervous thumb twiddling and leaned over towards the nightstand with more graceless scuffling that sent his magazine collection tumbling across the bed. It took him a number of tries to grab hold of the pull, his rattling grip making the teacup that sat atop it clink noisily when he finally managed to get it open. “Then I wake up with  _ this,  _ and now I can't  _ unsee  _ it _ , _ ” he said to Daisy as he removed a silver key from the depths of the drawer, where it was stashed beneath Mr. Barrow's last postcard. Around its bow was tied a trailing green ribbon, which Jimmy looped around his knuckles.

For the first time, Daisy looked at Jimmy as though he had truly lost his sanity. “I don't see how you mean,” she said slowly, mystified as to why Jimmy would have gone so over the edge because he'd found such an ordinary object forgotten at the bottom of a drawer.

“This... _thing_ were in me dream,” Jimmy explained, dangling the key from its ribbon in front of his face as if he'd been transfixed by its shape, which bore an odd geometry. “It were in me dream, Mr. Barrow were dead, and now it's _here_.”

Cocking her head, Daisy watched the key twirl on its green tether, still unsure she followed. Carefully, she asked, “You mean you dreamed it awake?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Jimmy affirmed as the key spun gently on its ribbon with deceptive innocence. He rotated his wrist, coiling the ribbon around a pair of fingers as he winched the key up towards his palm. “And if that were somethin', then why _shouldn't_ I be afraid for Mr. Barrow? It's like there ain't a wall between what's imagined and what's not anymore.”

“Mr. Barrow would say there's no such thing,” Daisy interjected, though her comment was met with a rather unappreciative glare from Jimmy.

“No, no – y'don't understand,” Jimmy said with a vigorous shake of his head as he wound the key closer to his hand. “It's like – like when I've got it in me fist, it's like I'm dreamin' with me eyes open.”

As if to demonstrate, he pulled the key into his hand, its metallic frame electrifying his flesh the moment it touched. The sun spotted room blew out, reinventing itself in muted tones and stark shadows. The vanity mirror threw out more reflected shapes than it ought to have; the pale figure of William Mason was outlined on Daisy's other side, sitting casually in line with them as though it were perfectly normal for him to do so. Jimmy's heart beat in his throat, and he promptly dropped the key; William vanished.

Jimmy sighed heavily, hanging his head in defeat with a lip that threatened to tremble in distress. Foreboding wreathed his entire being as fear for Thomas suffocated him. Something was gripping his every thought, repeatedly urging him to  _ pay attention.  _ Yet what disturbed him was the implication of what he might discover when he did – if he peeled back the opacity of oblivion and learned secrets that would have been easier to carry on ignoring. He didn't want Thomas to be dead – but nor did he want the stinging emotions that bled from the notion of being without him either.

The conflict running through Jimmy was apparent in even the littlest twitch, the wrenching of his bare feet against one another, the disquiet in his usual charms. The more Daisy observed, the more she couldn't help but feel it was Jimmy's separation from Mr. Barrow that had left him so unwound. She tried to be helpful in her consolation: “Mr. Barrow would say dreamin's how you see things the way they really are,” she said, wanting to give Jimmy a friendly tap on the shoulder, though she was shy to follow through lest she disturb him further.

“Like bein' _dead_ ,” Jimmy wailed, his palms smacking against his temples in his frustration, nails scratching deeply around clumps of his unkempt hair. Hanging from his wrist, the silver key twirled on its ribbon in the space between his downturned nose and his knees.

Thinking upon the late nights up she'd spent with Mr. Barrow and William, Daisy found the solution to be fairly obvious. “You could try askin',” she said, blinking at Jimmy with pursed lips. “I bet William'd know.”

“I bet,” Jimmy muttered dourly as he narrowed his eyes at the silver key, instantly recalling the way it had revealed William's startling proximity to him at its touch. Idly wondering if William was still nearby, he allowed the key to slide across his forearm, and for the brief moment its arabesque shape brushed against his flesh, the world plunged back into that unearthly limbo, and William fizzled beside Daisy once more, still raptly listening as though he were waiting to be included in the conversation.

“I don't think I want to, though,” Jimmy concluded as he pushed his arm out straight so that the key dangled as far as possible from his person; “I can believe whatever I want if I don't _know_.”

“That doesn't sound particularly clever,” said Daisy, furrowing her brow. It confused her that Jimmy could be both gutted over his imagined fears for Mr. Barrow and completely married to ignorant bliss all the same.

“S'not _meant_ to be,” Jimmy snapped, shooting her a sideways glare as if he were daring her to combat his flawed logic.

A painful crinkle knotted itself over the bridge of Daisy's nose, the only indication of her vexation about such a statement. “So you'd rather just mope around worryin' about it instead?” she frowned, this time actually daring to give Jimmy a shove that jostled his entire frame. “You're a right backwards barmpot, Jimmy Kent!”

“And I'm quite happy at it, thanks,” sniffed Jimmy as he resolutely glowered at the key hanging from the tips of his outstretched fingers like a puppet on a string.

“I'd've never guessed it,” observed Daisy with profound astuteness, though the puff in her cheeks somewhat dulled the effect. “Not with the way you've been witherin' away like another day by yourself's gonna kill you!”

The flush that attacked Jimmy's face was such a stark contrast to his bloodless complexion, it was impossible not to notice it. “It's nowt to do with  _ that.  _ I've made it this far on me ownsome and I don't plan to changin' it,” he protested with a squeaking crack to his voice; “It's a horde of fuckin'  _ ghosts _ hauntin' me every breath what's gonna do me in. I'd been just  _ fine  _ before!”

“Well, you're not _fine_ now!” Daisy shot back, pounding the heels of her hands into her skirts and bending towards him in her exuberance.

Jimmy jerked back to avoid her flailing, sending the key spinning on its green tether; it whipped around Jimmy's wrist in a wide circle that tightened as the ribbon flew around his forearm until, eventually, the silver fob landed against his flesh once more. At once, the world dropped into its mirrored state like the natural colors had been sucked into the sky. William was leaning right through Daisy's obliviously shivering figure, his ephemeral nose a scant inch away from Jimmy's as he said, “Pay attention.”

The ambiguity of the statement cut Jimmy to the bone, and he reeled, hitching his legs up onto the bed and scooting as far away from William as he could until he was backed up against the cot's metal framework upon a throne of pillows. He'd never heard William speak before, but the ease of it only served to make the vision that much realer, and terrified Jimmy more. An accusing finger quivering at William, Jimmy managed to at least say, “Th-this is all  _ your  _ fault!”

William recoiled slightly, though he still intersected Daisy with abstract convergence. His movement lacked fluidity, and almost appeared as if he'd jumped from one pose to another, settling with his palms turned inwards and rested them atop his thighs. He seemed uncertain as to why Jimmy was upset with him.

“Well?” Jimmy demanded, still crowded against the head of the cot like a frightened, wounded animal. “You've got me attention now, right?”

Suddenly, William blinkered from his spot at the foot of the bed and came flying at Jimmy, who immediately threw his arms around his neck and tucked his chin against his chest with a fearful cry. The pale glow of William's translucent shape fizzled to black as it screeched through Jimmy like a powerful gust of winter air. In the brief moment William's spirit enshrouded Jimmy, a whirring moan deafened Jimmy like the buzzing of a thousand insects, whispering: “And you've got His.”

Then William breezed through the wall behind the bed frame as if it weren't there at all. Jimmy would have remained where he was, agonizing over the meaning of it all, if the repetitive rattle of the door handle didn't immediately replace the unnatural silence William had left in his wake. Jimmy snapped to attention, shuddering as the deathly shadow that had seeped into his nightmares leaked through the crack beneath the door; the doorknob shook violently as though an invisible hand was desperately trying to twist it. The hitch in Jimmy's breathing began to match the intensity of the clatter, abruptly catching beneath his tongue when the door suddenly slammed open, banging so violently against the wall, it quaked on its hinges.

Jimmy took the wild phenomenon as a clue that he was supposed to follow William into the hall. The key jangled against his wrist as he scrambled off the bed and into the corridor outside, which spiraled against gravity even as his feet trod evenly across the floor. He stumbled through just as William sunk into the opposite wall, while, nearby, a closed door creaked ajar enough to beckon Jimmy through it.

It didn't take Jimmy long to establish that he'd slid into none other than Mr. Barrow's room, though it didn't appear quite the same way he remembered it. Most noticeably, the slanted eaves were lit with the same alien cosmology that had decorated the underside of Mr. Barrow's umbrella in the funeral procession, shifting as if the constellations themselves were alive. The mantle was cluttered with far more candles than the single one that Jimmy was used to, all of them dripping hot wax as tongues of flame writhed inches above their wicks – strung like fiery stars with earthly moorings. The mantle clock's hands twisted backwards in time without regard for the regularity of even ticking; a opalescent sheen glimmered on the petals of the belladonna flower that stood in the vase beside it. In the royal portrait that hung over the fireplace, three of the four courtiers couldn't settle on how to arrange themselves around Queen Victoria, and argued in pantomime as they shuffled about within the frame.

“Right, I've had about enough of your games,” said Jimmy as he stepped across the room towards William, who was waiting for him by Mr. Barrow's bureau. The floor rippled around his toes as if he were alighting a still lagoon. “So you can tell me what you're on about, and then you can _get gone_.”

Despite the forwardness of his demands, Jimmy was almost surprised when William answered, though his voice seemed to come from the wrong side of the room, and his mouth still carried that jerky quality to it that made it seem to flicker when he spoke. “Tryin' to help keep an eye out is all,” he said.

“Fat lot of good that's done. I were better off without you meddlin',” snapped Jimmy, glaring through William's translucent form to the mirror that stood on the vanity, where the image of a fantastical city was imprinted against twin moons glinting with stardust.

“Were you?” said William in an annoyingly complacent way.

“ _Yes_ ,” Jimmy hissed, almost losing his balance as he stomped a foot that plunged straight through the floorboards with a watery splash. His need to grab onto the frame of the nearby bed completely destroyed his attempt to come off as menacing. “I don't dream, me. When I'd sleep, I might as well be dead – and I _liked_ it that way – until you turned up, that is.”

“Ain't much difference between dead and dreamin',” replied William, practically challenging Jimmy to ask him how he might know. “I've always been here – just needed pointin' out,” he continued, folding his hands behind his back, though they still shone through his ethereal shape; “Same for all your visions, too.

Something about the way William's gaze penetrated Jimmy induced a rage within him, ridden with anxiety that William could see the true scope of what troubled Jimmy's subconscious – the array of things that Jimmy had stuffed so far back, they had quite nearly vanished. “That's none of your bloody business,” Jimmy scowled, cracking his joints with menace in an effort to curb his violent urges.

“Mm, s'not for me to say,” mused William, whose eyes flicked downwards.

“Say it anyway,” Jimmy growled testily. He was far too busy glowering at William to notice the rising shadow that was diffusing like spilled ink beneath the ripples kissing contour of Jimmy's toes. Long, writhing appendages extended from its central mass and reached upwards, penetrating the floorboards in subtle arches.

“It's the dreams you have when you're awake – your escapes, your fantasies,” William described with abstract clarity to a horrified Jimmy, who was too absorbed in his paranoia to notice the black tentacle that had slowly risen up from the planar shadow and was curling up between his feet. Its dripping suckers loomed so very close to Jimmy's bare ankles, longing to touch. “Your desires, your fears – your _lusts_ ,” said William, his cryptic words charming the tendril to rise further; “It's no wonder He thinks your imagination is _beautiful_.”

“ _Excuse me_?” Jimmy reeled. His feet splashed through the floor again in protest, and the yearning tentacle recoiled slightly at the disruption. Unnoticed by Jimmy, the entire ground beneath him had been consumed by the blackness.

“He who lies dead but dreamin' – the Great Watcher,” was William's frank reply. “You soothe Him.”

“For the hundredth time, I don't dream!” screamed Jimmy as he tried to take an impassioned lunge at the departed footman. He was halfway through his stride when something slimy and cold latched itself around his ankle, slithering up the length of his calf and causing him to stumble. A voiceless whimper shook behind his teeth as he started to sink through the floor, his eyes darting frantically upwards to find William hovering complacently as the thing around his leg began to drag him downwards.

Fear slayed Jimmy. Frantically, Jimmy groped for an anchor in reality. “I'm Jimmy Kent and I'm sane, logical –“ his words became garbled as the wet floor blurbled up to his neck; the thick tentacle had wound itself further up his leg, its probing tip climbing higher up his thigh, its grip strengthening around tensed muscles.

“ _Logical!_ ” he tried to repeat as the flooring flooded into his mouth with the taste of brine. He threw a desperate hand up at William, who continued to watch Jimmy drown as if it were a film. The creature jerked Jimmy downwards one final time, yanking him deep enough for the floor to close over the tips of his yearning fingers; the silver key attached to his wrist bobbed on the wooden surface briefly, before it too was swallowed with a ripple.

The realm beneath the floor was still as a grave. Bubbles streamed from Jimmy's mouth as he tried to scream into the silence, but all he got for his trouble was the discovery that he could still breathe underwater. He wrestled and kicked, trying to at least free himself of the thing that gripped his leg, but it had only twisted itself around him even more, another tentacle coiled around his waist, and another still slipping around his throat, its tip gently curved around his cheek. Beneath him, an eerie landscape of Cyclopean masonry began to delineate itself in the murky gloom, the corpse of a city forgotten by time. A chilling murmur rose up from the ruins, a hideous repetition of the chant heard at Thomas's nightmare funeral.

_ Cthulhu fhtagn! Cthulhu fhtagn! _

The reminder of what Thomas had looked like in that coffin filled Jimmy with a trepidation strong enough to make him nauseous. He tried to squirm, but the thing was too powerful for him to even move, and he quickly exhausted himself. Soon, he had only the steam to hang limply in his cephalopod trappings; his eyelids shuttered closed.

Then, from the grim blackness came a familiar whisper: “Shh,  _ shh _ , my darling.”

Eyes widening, his flooded vision refocused in the submarine haze. The dim outline of Thomas defined itself before him, floating easily as they descended towards the seabed together. One of his hands had slid in place of the monstrous tendril that had adhered itself to Jimmy's jaw, tenderly stroking his cheek in a far more comforting manner than the tentacled thing could have ever done. “No need to be afraid,” he said with a tiny quirk of his lips that shot Jimmy with a sense of relief. “I've got you.”

The welling in Jimmy's eyes mingled with the salt water surging around him, stinging his eyes as though he were swimming in a bucket of his own tears. “Make it stop, Thomas,” Jimmy begged, his expression creased with distress as the tentacles looped another coil around his body. “I don't know what's goin' on, but  _ please _ – make it stop! Don't leave me alone with – with all  _ this _ !”

“It's alright, Jimmy,. You'll wake up soon, and everythin' will be as it should,” assured Thomas, his wan fingertips feathering against Jimmy's face like shifting light; “All you have to do is _wake up_ – and pay attention!”

“But Thomas!” Jimmy protested, flailing in his monstrous bonds. The key's ribbon began to unravel from around his wrist in the ebbing water, falling away from his skin and causing the ocean around him to split into an spectrum of color that defied human description. “Thom _as_!” Jimmy tried to yell again, his voice spliced between the flickering colors. “TH-om-AS! Th _OM-_ AS!”

“THOMAS!”

Jimmy spat the name into Daisy's palm as she muzzled his scream with her hand. His own room, blazing in its natural saturation, snapped into focus around him as his eyes darted wildly about. He was panting enough that Daisy had to struggle to keep him still. The silver key lay innocuously across the bedding, trailing from the green ribbon still knotted around Jimmy's wrist.

“Blimey, Jimmy, that were a proper trance, that,” Daisy breathed, daring uncork Jimmy's mouth when it seemed he was calming down again. “It were like you'd slipped right out of your skin!”

Not comfortable with admitting how right Daisy's assessment was, Jimmy toyed with his lips between his teeth and said nothing. The girth of those massive tentacles still seared against his body.

“You've really got to stop makin' a habit out of that,” Daisy was prattling, waiting for Jimmy to settle before she removed the gag of her hand from his gasping mouth, which trembled softly in fear. “It were lucky I were here with all your shoutin'. Someone mighta come in and – “

She was no sooner halfway finished with that sentence when the door was wrenched open to reveal a very horrified looking hallboy, who was shadowed by none other than Alfred and Mr. Carson himself. Mr. Carson looked unsurprisingly indignant to find Daisy sitting on Jimmy's unmade bed with Jimmy in hardly more than his skivvies, but it was Alfred's wounded face that stung the most. He seemed torn between anger and betrayal, though it was hard to say which one of them the sentiment was being flung at.

“Since you've found it reasonable to finally put your childish little charade to bed, James,” started Mr. Carson as he shouldered his way through the other two and into the tiny dormitory; “I think a sound explanation is in order. _Now_ , if you don't mind.”

“Oh, Mr. Carson, it's nothin' terrible, I swear it. Please don't punish Jimmy when he's just had another turn,” Daisy interjected, clamping her hand even tighter over Jimmy's lips so that he was only able to make a series of strangled noises in response. Her intention in doing so may have been helpful, but it unfortunately only made Mr. Carson more cross.

“I do not know if it makes me more or less comfortable to find _you_ in the middle of this, Daisy – not with what I _thought_ I heard being talked about as I came down the hall,” said Mr. Carson with no reservation in displeasure. “Do you wish to tell me _why_ Mr. Barrow is under discussion while you take a private teatime? Is it something you feel cannot be discussed at the table with civil conversation? Or is it just another element of your so-called _charm_ , James?” There was a thinly veiled attitude of sarcasm in Mr. Carson's tone, though Daisy wasn't quite sure what had invited it. She stared dumbly at Mr. Carson, frozen in place until Mr. Carson cleared his throat and added, “Perhaps you might let _James_ attempt a defense, as surely most of the guilt is with _him_.”

“But Mr. Carson...!”

Mr. Carson crucified her with a particularly unwavering glare, the lines of his expression barred straight across his features. Daisy wilted on the spot, her hand dropping from Jimmy's chin in defeat. For his part, Jimmy only blinked stupidly downwards, as if he were surprised that he had been returned with the gift of speech. He gave his mussed blond hair a startled shake, attempting to orient himself, a monotone hum vibrating through his rounded lips as the reality of it all set in.

“There's nowt to hear out of _him_ , Mr. Carson,” Alfred suddenly spoke up, though he was still flinging his heavy frown at Jimmy and Daisy. “Except that Ivy were right that this selfish get hasn't got anythin' to him if there ain't a bird wrapped round his little finger. A poor, defenseless –“

“That's _enough_ of that, Alfred,” Mr. Carson snipped, though it was clear he completely agreed. Still, he at least had the grace to entreat Jimmy for an explanation of his own – a play for civil justice in the very least.

For Jimmy, however, the sensory and emotional overload was starting to outweigh his usual knack for quick-witted backchat, replaced with unchecked passion. A sneer crinkled his face as he he snidely derided Alfred, “Get a look at you, you fat pillock. Only care about it when you're missin' the attention, eh? I'd say Daisy's too good for the like of  _ you  _ if this is how you go on about her.”

“Excuse me?” Alfred gaped, insulted by such nerve in front of Mr. Carson.

“Y'see, Mr. Carson? It's just jealousy,” Jimmy said smoothly, though he still kept an air of rashness about him, a reckless defense that burned like an uncontrollable gas fire as his panic grew. “Poor old Alfred, always destined to be _second place._ Not that he's got much of a chancewhen he's up against a champion like me.”

“That still does not excuse the nature in which you've lured Dai – “ Mr. Carson started to say, but the dig at Alfred on both a personal and professional level was enough to wind the ginger up beyond all sensibility, and his reaction far overpowered anything else balanced on Mr. Carson's tongue.

“If you're tryin' to get at me, I'll thank you not to wedge me friends in the crossfire, Jimmy!” Alfred screamed at a volume no one in the room thought he was capable of. The tall footman nearly knocked the spectating hallboy over as he lunged at Jimmy, fingers clawed out like he meant to wrap them around Jimmy's neck. “If you think you're so clever, why haven't you told your new girl there about the _real_ reason you fell out with Ivy, eh? The _real_ reason you could have all the women in the world and they'll all always be just a game to you!”

By then, Daisy had scrambled out of the way, for Alfred had come barreling into Jimmy with such force that the bed lurched across the floor when he tackled him down against the mattress. The two young men grappled with each other like they meant to kill one another with a strong choke hold and a few dirty hits. The hallboy fled to rustle up some help, while Mr. Carson could only stand aside and shout at them to calm down. Daisy was just short of bursting into tears, frustrated by the uncontrollable catastrophe her attempt to help had erupted into.

“Yeah? And what's that, eh?” Jimmy was taunting as he wrestled Alfred onto his back with the hidden strength bursting from his compact frame. “I think me and Daisy get on just fine – if you must know!”

“Oh, like how you get on with your _Mr. Barrow_?” Alfred rejoined grimacing as Jimmy kneed him in the gut and whacked him across the side of the face with a backwards cuff. “Me auntie were right about you. Or were you not goin' to tell her that she ain't your _sort_?”

The comment incited Jimmy into a maddened fit, triggered by the light graze against the inner conflicts he preferred to ignore. “Is this the sort of shite Ivy tells you?” Jimmy screamed so loudly, he chafed his throat. “The sort of petty shite that that you eat up just 'cause you're that desperate for her to fuckin'  _ glance _ at you?”

“Ain't much to put two and two together, seein' what I seen – knowin' what I _know_ about you, Jimmy bloody Kent,” Alfred hissed, rolling Jimmy onto his back and slamming a heavy fist into Jimmy's nose with enough force that he very nearly broke it. “I ain't as stupid as you always seem to take me for!” He punched Jimmy again, this time smashing the bridge of Jimmy's nose like the satisfaction of destroying Jimmy's attractiveness was the prize to be won. A spurt of blood twirled out from one of Jimmy's nostrils, splattering across Alfred's knuckles as he pulled his fist back with the intention to clobber Jimmy yet again.

By then, Daisy had started to cry. “Alfred,  _ please _ , stop!” she begged through sniffles as she hung against the cot's foot post. Every shatter that ran through the bed's frame when one of the two footmen attacked the other quaked through Daisy like her bones were going to rattle apart. “ _ Please _ , you've got it wrong!”

With a chunky smear of blood caking his upper lip, Jimmy fiercely combated Alfred for dominance with a series of dirty punches to the jaw. As his fist hammered ruthlessly into Alfred's face, the silver key still tied to his wrist bounced against his flesh, though the rapid transition between the dream world it unlocked and the natural one went unseen by Jimmy, whose vision was too red to comprehend anything but rage. Neither did he notice the drop in temperature around him and the frosted puffs of air that had begun to fog his breathing even as the key's touch revealed spectral glimpses of the Abbey's unseen residents.

It wasn't until Alfred was weighing down upon Jimmy's solar plexus with all his weight, ready to decorate Jimmy with a blackened eye, did Jimmy comprehend a supernatural intervention. His fist cocked back, Alfred let out a wild yelp as he was suddenly yanked back from Jimmy's person like someone had grabbed him by the ankle and pulled with a force strong enough to send him zooming backwards off the bed. Daisy squeaked with concern for Alfred's safety as he banged his chin on his way to the floor, while even Mr. Carson let out a hiccough of shock at the sight of Alfred being dragged off Jimmy as though by unseen hands.

Jimmy, meanwhile, gaped at the sight of another ghostly soldier – the blind, mutilated one he'd noticed at Thomas's dream funeral – looming just above where Alfred had landed. Dimly, the recollection of something William had told him in his recent vision returned to him: “ _ Just tryin' to help keep an eye out is all.”  _ Jimmy clutched the silver key more tightly against his wrist, growing distracted by the notion that maybe this wasn't the first time he'd been kept out of trouble in such a fashion – just the first time he'd ever been made aware of it. The blind haunt lingering above Alfred surged with bright definition, and Jimmy gathered an armful of blankets against his chest to soothe himself; the room began to spin.

Daisy had dropped to Alfred's side, unable to help herself from worrying about him. But as she crouched beside him, gingerly touching his shoulder, but Alfred behaved as if she wasn't even there. As long as he lived, he swore he'd never forget the icy grip against his flesh – an undead touch that still burned with evil fire in the shape of five spindly fingers. White as a sheet, Alfred cornered Jimmy with wide eyes and an open mouth, stammering with flabbergast: “Y-You've got the  _ Devil  _ in you, Jimmy Kent. I a-always knew it!”

Meanwhile, in the midst of something he had no idea how to handle, Mr. Carson intervened with a stubborn pride that valiantly masked his own shaken nerves. He resorted to his usual posture, his hands tied behind his back, and stepped up to the bed. The cut of his broad form loomed behind Jimmy as he issued a sharp command: “I'll thank the lot of you to return to your duties without a word of this to anyone, I daresay,” he warned crisply. “Am I clear?”

“Don't need to tell me twice, Mr. Carson,” said Alfred as he popped to his feet, clearly eager to escape Jimmy's room as soon as possible. He flung a pointed look at Jimmy, adding coldly, “And you – you stay well and far away from me – me _and_ Ivy.”

Twisting away from the lot of them, Jimmy pulled his wad of blankets closer to his chest and sunk his chin into their cushioned depths. Within the folds of the bedding, the silver key sandwiched itself between his two forearms, and for the first time, Jimmy found a breath of relief in the escape its dreamworld brought him. Mr. Carson and Daisy moved in monochrome pantomime, anything either of them said like a streak of white noise shooting around his ears – a worthwhile exchange for the reappearance of the blind, mutilated soldier that had ripped Alfred off of him during their brawl.

“I don't think I need any more of your _help_ ,” Jimmy told the ghost as Daisy tried shaking his shoulder, a sensation that didn't resonate with him in his dream state. “I just want to be left alone.”

“I can't say it matters much what _you_ want,” said the spirit with an indifferent sort of ambivalence about Jimmy's demand. There was something about the aura this particular ghost exuded that was strikingly different from that of William – a quietness that was much more somber and delicate. When the ghost spoke, his words translated through Jimmy as chills that shook his spine and chattered his teeth: “You live until you die,” the battered soldier said with grave severity; “And I can't have _that_.

“What's it matter?” Jimmy said with a bitter edge of sarcasm, wishing he could just be granted the solitude he'd been missing since his sleep had become so disrupted. “If it's such a big to-do, just let it happen – let me have some _peace_.”

“Fear's what pulls your strings,” the ghost said with the plainness of someone describing the weather, despite the prosiness of his diction. “It'll stop once you _wake up_ and see there's nothing to fear about Him.”

“But I _am_ awake,” Jimmy insisted sharply, huddling into his armload of blankets more tightly. From the corner of his eye, he could just catch Daisy's flat, gray silhouette as she tried shaking him more roughly – a sensation that didn't register with Jimmy at all.

“Awake with eyes still closed,” the spirit returned as though he could sense something in his blindness that Jimmy could not. “Stop running away and just _wake up_!”

The command ran through Jimmy with a sudden blast of frost so intense, he shivered violently and threw the wad of bedding he held in his arms. The key leaped off his skin, ripping him from his somnambulist retreat and back to the misery of life, which rocked unsteadily with Daisy's urgent shaking. Her voice blended with Mr. Carson's at a pitch that didn't ring comfortably in Jimmy's ears at all, the volume almost unbearably loud. He crushed the heels of his hands around the sides of his head in an effort to drown them out, but in the dulled murmur stuck inside his skull, he heard only the repetition of the evil, alien chant that had tainted his recent hallucinations.

_Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn! Cthulhu fhtagn!_

It distressed him that the words had begun to make sense to him, a language he had only forgotten how to speak because he had fallen out of practice:  _ “In his house in R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming. Cthulhu waits!”  _ The phrase filled him with dread as a very clear vision of the underwater city that he kept revisiting in his nightmares came into focus. The disturbing feeling that he was being watched by sleepless eyes through the murky depths returned, and at once, he uncorked his ears just as the blind ghost's voice infiltrated his thoughts to say, “He's waiting, James! He's waiting for  _ you _ .”

Jimmy roared in fright and flung himself prostrate on the bed, burrowing forward into the blankets until he'd enshrouded himself in blessed darkness once more.  _ This is safe, _ Jimmy told himself once he'd cocooned himself as soundly as he'd been when Daisy had first come up with tea.  _ No one can find me – I'm safe, safe, safe.... _

Madness was starting to set in; Mr. Barrow couldn't come back soon enough.

 

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas worries about how Jimmy's been getting on.

 

The whispers had started long before Thomas could rightly say. Perhaps they had always been there in the back of his mind, dull voices that shaped the patterns of an existence that was limited only by the expanse of his imagination.

Thomas had a thoroughly  _ vivid  _ imagination.

When he had been young in the world, the whispers had guided him to a fabulous place that could only be found beyond the wall of sleep, and it quickly became his favorite escape from the bothersome trappings of his earthly confines. It was a silent, haunted city that soon became a domain of his own making, its roads and arches all cobbled together out of memories both lucid and forgotten. As of late, however, its fantastic architecture had begun to resemble that of Downton Abbey with striking distinction.

By the light of twin moons and sucking stars, he would walk the alleyways of this secret kingdom alone, his only company the restless spirits also hovering in this space between sleep and death. They faded easily between the darkness of his mind and his tangible reality with such frequency that even when he was awake, Thomas found great pleasure in the solitude of their company. They found death just as disappointing as he found life.

Sometimes, Thomas would catch sight of Jimmy roaming the streets of his dreams, lost and befuddled as he wandered through his fantasies. Every time, Thomas would try to catch up with him, following him over twisting boulevards and unreal roadways, but never quite able to win the prize. Constantly, Thomas would wake up, fall asleep, flicker between the Jimmy that was stuck in his dreams and the one that ruled the downstairs corridors of Downton Abbey until he couldn't keep it straight in his head any longer. It left him feeling no better than a ghost that might disappear at a moment's notice – or at the click of Jimmy's fingers. Not that Thomas would have minded: he thought about death a lot – enough that he decided it became him.

It was with this muddled clarity that Thomas was able to see beneath layers in the common perception of the tangible world, catching distortions in reality that went unseen by most – a lyrical sort of worldliness that kept him wrapped up in its trappings, while still holding him aside and separate. In shadows, he found forgotten shades; in mirrors, he saw hidden thoughts reversed beneath the glass. As he stood in front of the small vanity in his dormitory at the Levinson house with his jawline coated in shaving lather, his reflection lit a cigarette and lingered in Jimmy's untidy room back in England. Both of them carefully monitored Jimmy's hunched form on the edge of the bed, which was turned away from the mirror. The findings of his braces peeked out between the hem of his waistcoat and the high waist of his trousers as he bent to pull on his socks and shoes.

Momentarily, the door in Jimmy's dormitory inched open and Alfred poked his head inside. “Oi, you done yet?” he wondered as Jimmy glanced at the tall redhead over one shoulder before wordlessly returning to his shoes. A long, ignored sigh came from Alfred, who loitered in the doorway just long enough express concern at Jimmy's return to silence. Only Thomas and his mirrored self took note of his exit.

Jimmy then stood and went to retrieve his coattails, which hung from a hook on the wall. He shrugged them on over his waistcoat and then started to walk towards the mirror, his fingers raking through the shock of wavy fringe that fell over his brow. Thomas's reflection pointedly stepped out of the frame, though he continued to smoke and watch Jimmy as the footman smeared an unnecessary amount of pomade into his blond hair before dragging a proper comb through it to smooth it out. Remnants of the brawl he'd had with Alfred were still apparent in his haggard face, his nose just a bit crooked and one eye rimmed with puffed violet. A smattering of red nicks that were still in the process of healing flecked his skin.

When he was through, Jimmy put the comb down, adjusted his bowtie and then reached for something lying on his dresser – a familiar silver key on a green ribbon. Seeing it in Jimmy's hand made Thomas's heart race, especially as he watched Jimmy carefully tuck the little talisman into his inside coat pocket, where his fingers must have brushed against its surface, for Jimmy gave the mirror the strangest look before he turned to go. He still didn't breathe a word.

When he had gone, Thomas's reflection casually manifested himself upon the glass again. He was lighting a new cigarette, which Thomas glared at him for. “He smelled your fags, I bet,” he said crisply as he stroked his shaven face to ensure he'd been clean about it.

“Says you,” Thomas's reflection said with the same inflection and candor as his master. He took a long, contrary drag on his cigarette to make his point and then exhaled enough smoke to fog the entire mirror.

“He's been upset enough without _your_ help,” Thomas snapped at himself, though his reflection still met him with sarcasm.

“Again, says _you_ ,” was the self-flagellant reply.

Thomas gave himself a derisive eye roll and stepped away from the mirror to finish dressing. When he returned to put the finishing touches on his look, his reflection was gone from Jimmy's room, the empty state of which still rebounded off the glass. Thomas didn't have to wonder where his backwards self might have got off to: he knew himself well enough to hazard a guess that it was another reflective surface closer to Jimmy. 

Downstairs, in the Levinson servants' hall, Thomas had toast, coffee and two cigarettes for breakfast. He didn't interact much with the Levinsons' regular staff, which was just a direct copy of the one back at Downton Abbey except with those obnoxiously thick, colonial accents. They gossiped about each other; for no apparent reason, they uniformly disliked the head housekeeper – who held more rank than the butler with the way it was done in the States: they were all disgustingly satisfied with their pithy, servile lives. No one noticed when Thomas bussed his plate to the kitchen and subsequently headed upstairs to help Lord Grantham dress for the day.

Thomas found His Lordship in odd spirits that morning. He wouldn't have called Lord Grantham's mood a poor one exactly, but he certainly wasn't his usual, jovial self either. Thomas made no comment about it as he laid out Lord Grantham's day suit on the bed, not particularly fussed about it either way. While Lord Grantham and Thomas were managing a professional relationship as well as could be expected, neither one was particularly adjusted to the other either, and it showed in the difficulty they often had with even basic chat.

But as he stood with Lord Grantham's waistcoat dangling from his curved fingers, waiting to receive His Lordship's exalted person, he was met with an unexpected question on the subject. “Have you heard from anyone back home, Barrow?” Lord Grantham wondered with an air of despondency as he shrugged into the waistcoat and pulled it closed over his belly with the aid of a floor-length mirror that stood on spindled oak posts.

Thomas smoothed over his surprise at being asked his opinion about something with the ease of indifference. “I catch a glimpse now and again, m'lord,” he said genially, his eyes flicking up at the mirror, where his reflection was lounging behind Lord Grantham in the Downton kitchens. He was smoking as he watched Jimmy and the bustle around him from the glass panes of the window above the sideboard, unnoticed.

“Does it make you miss home as much as it does me?” Lord Grantham continued as he slowly did up his buttons.

In the mirror's alternate world, Jimmy waited with Alfred for Mrs. Patmore to finish the next round of food to be brought up to the upstairs servery. They stood awkwardly next to one another, though Alfred's fidgeting made a stark contrast to the glum way Jimmy stood next to him. Even with the unperturbed attempts on Daisy's part to make the blond footman smile – all of which went very poorly with Alfred – Jimmy suffered in silence, not even rising to the temptation to give Alfred a hard time over his idiotic fumbles with the two kitchen maids. Thomas wished he could scream – wished that if he did, his reflection's mirrored version of it would screech everything to a halt back at Downton so that Jimmy might have space to breathe. He wanted to cross the void between them, to wrap his arms around Jimmy and offer him the comfort that always seemed to fall short in the past.

He sufficed to say aloud to Lord Grantham, “Yes, m'lord. It really does.”

There was a momentary pause as Thomas went back to the bed to fetch Lord Grantham his coat. Outside, the unending din of Manhattan began to pick up its roar as the sun climbed higher into the morning sky, though its light was consistently swallowed up by the smog caking the urban air.

“I hate this bloody place,” said Lord Grantham at length as he adjusted his tie with a frown. “I lay awake at night with its loud, lurking breaths in my ear. Tell me, Barrow, do you sleep as poorly as I do in this infernal city?”

Thomas remained distant as he stood aside, waiting for Lord Grantham to finish primping. Still, he gave a curt opinion on the subject: “I sleep poorly no matter what the circumstance,” he said; “I've got used to it.”

It certainly wasn't the response that Lord Grantham had expected to hear, though he hid it well with a barely noticeable hesitation. “You mustn't overwork yourself, Barrow,” he ended up saying. “It's good to be diligent, but you shouldn't allow it to affect your health.” Thomas couldn't decide if the Earl's tone was meant to be sarcastic or not, though it didn't stop him from taking offense. He didn't like being spoken down to, even from the likes of Lord Grantham – who, as far as Thomas was concerned, ranked very small in the cosmic scheme of things.

“S'not that, m'lord,” Thomas said succinctly, though he could feel the expectant look Lord Grantham was shooting him even without a glance at the mirror. He strangled the sigh that started to deflate through his nose, briefly elaborating: “I'm a somnambulist – though I don't much try to mention it. Night terrors and that.”

Lord Grantham clearly wasn't prepared to hear such an explanation, though it didn't do much to inspire a difference in their rapport. The Earl cleared his throat into the top of his fist very audibly, and then did his best to recover: “I can't imagine what it's like,” he said in a way that suggested he didn't particularly believe that Thomas was telling the truth.

“It's not the worst I've had to endure,” Thomas said smartly, privately sneering a comment to himself about the spiteful attitudes other aspects of his character had won him. “And by now, I'd say I'm used to it. I lock meself in at night. Seems to do the trick well enough.”

Lord Grantham furrowed his brow at Thomas, frowning in a way that made the inner workings of his head more than obvious. Thomas decided he'd said enough on the subject, fairly certain that his description of his violently lucid dreaming was already more than Lord Grantham could swallow. Besides, it wasn't like it was exactly untrue: Thomas  _ did  _ roam from his bed when caught up in a particularly captivating fancy, and he  _ did  _ take the precaution of barricading himself into his room most nights to keep himself from ending up in an inexplicable situation – especially in the wake of all the misunderstanding that had surrounded the night he'd very consciously decided sneaking into Jimmy's dormitory was a good idea.

The main detail he kept to himself, however, was the fact that there were times that he was troubled by the opposite effect – when his eyes might have been open, but he still strolled through abstract fantasies and creeping horrors that found him even while he was wide awake. He blinked at the fanciful image of Downton's kitchens, which still shone back to him in Lord Grantham's mirror with a dreamy quality; cheekily, his own reflective self shrugged back at him without the Earl being any wiser of it.

“Well, we'll be home soon enough,” Lord Grantham summed up after another uncomfortable silence as he needlessly fiddled with the placement of his tie knot. “If Harold's affairs aren't settled within the next week or so, I'll have to assume there's nothing my continued presence can do to help it, and we'll get on our way.”

Thomas made a dull hum of agreement, while in the mirror, his reflection was leaning his chin heavily on his hand, watching Jimmy from beneath heavy eyelids: the blond footman was anxious, twitchy and still mute as he started to walk off with a freshly laden tray, ignorant of everyone around him. Back in New York, Thomas breathed out slowly and prayed that Jimmy would manage to hang on that much longer without him. “It'll be a relief,” Thomas said, knowing full well how much it was.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANKS TO MY LOVELY BETAS COSMICZOMBIE AND ALSO LARAMIE, I'M ACTUALLY AHEAD AGAIN. It really hit me hard losing thirty pages of this story, so I've slowly been trying to recover. I think I might be there again, so hopefully you guys are still interested in the story despite my delay! I apologize! Stupid real life. On the bright side, I've been drawing more ;D


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jimmy learns more about another one of the Abbey's ghosts.

 

Though Jimmy had returned to his regular duties as a footman, his monastic silence continued. If anyone else on staff had been at first relieved to be free of Jimmy's relentless commentary, it eventually just grew to be unsettling. Jimmy avoided the company of others whenever he could help it, and could frequently be found roaming the servants' passages alone and in a funny daze. He walked through the world as if he were somewhere else entirely, especially at night when he couldn't sleep. Not knowing any better, one of the hallboys had started calling Jimmy 'The Attic Phantom', and the name had stuck. Almost everyone on staff had begun to refer to him as such behind his back – and even sometimes to his face, since Jimmy never seemed to hear what anyone said to him anymore. He had become a shell, his soul lost on a forgotten tide.

This wasn't entirely untrue. Jimmy had been quick to learn that the silver key Mr. Barrow had gifted him in his dream unlocked an entire dimension of drifting shadows and hidden secrets that lived just beneath the surface of the world, impervious to the naked eye. Before long, Jimmy had developed a habit of rushing to easy shelter from the inexplicable and unhappy facets of his everyday life with the key in hand, happy to hover for hours in a trance that not even Mr. Carson, Daisy or God could have roused him from. It was blessed peace.

So, as had become normal, Jimmy drifted in a fashion very similar to the spirits that also resided at the Abbey, a tangible haunt that had become too strung out between worlds to properly belong in either one. That particular night was troubled by the ominous rumble of thunder, the stars blotted out by brooding, black clouds fat with summer rain. But Jimmy was indifferent to the oncoming storm as he wandered aimlessly through the house's back corridors with a paraffin lamp in one hand and one of his  _ Weird Tales  _ magazines in the other, mindless of where he wound up as he lost himself in stories that seemed less far-fetched with every read-through.

_'There is talk of apportioning Randolph Carter's estate among his heirs, but I shall stand firmly against this course because I do not believe he is dead. There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine; and from what I know of Carter I think he has merely found a way to traverse these mazes. Whether or not he will ever come back, I cannot say. He wanted the lands of dream he had lost, and yearned for the days of his childhood. Then he found a key, and I somehow believe he was able to use it to strange advantage._

_'I shall ask him when I see him, for I expect to meet him shortly in a certain dream-city we both used to haunt....'_

Not for the first time, Jimmy wondered to himself if the writer of these particular narratives had stumbled upon similar experiences to his own – if Mr. Barrow had also been subject to such unseemly events. It made Jimmy curious to know the experience was always the same, or if it varied from person to person. Did it mean that there were more people like him and Mr. Barrow and the authors published in  _ Weird Tales  _ and  _ Astonishing Tales  _ and all the other pulp rags that most people dismissed as fanciful whimsy? And if so, what separated Jimmy, Mr. Barrow and the like from everyone else in the world? Why couldn't Daisy see the things he did, even when Mr. Barrow had made her more than aware of it?

_ Why am I  _ _**special** _ _?  _ he thought for what seemed a countless time. He felt no closer to solving the mystery, even as he read and reread his magazines in search of an answer. The most he'd noticed was that the printings of a few of the issues contained some rather egregious errors in the dates, making them seem as though they came from the future, but he had supposed that was a flaw attached to the amateur nature of the publication. It did nothing to help him with his questions.

A whining creak resonated from somewhere further down the passage Jimmy was currently traversing, calling his attention. The makings of a whisper hitched in his throat, though the sound that escaped him was a splintered rasp. Somewhere in the softly lit shadows that crowded the hallway, Jimmy thought he saw a flash of tailcoat, a glint of brass button. Nervously he pushed off the wall and peered into the dark. His pulse began hammer as an irrational hope filled him.

_Mr. Barrow? It can't be...._

But at the upcoming bend in the corridor, a splash of electric light stained an empty corner. Heralded by the scraping of branches against a nearby window, the incandescence wavered as a particularly clamorous wind howled through the trees outside. The disturbance caught Jimmy's attention until a jarring thunderclap slapped the Abbey's rooftops, and the corridor's coppery glow snapped to twilit blue with a crackle. The suddenness of it caused Jimmy to jerk his little paraffin lamp sharply in surprise, a motion which snuffed out the flame and abandoned him in the flicker of lightning. As another volt charged the nighttime sky, Jimmy swore once more that he had seen the flap of coattails adorned with six distinctive, brass buttons.

_ Did they get back too late for anyone to know? _ Jimmy wondered as the patter of another lightning bolt once again suggested a human shape moving through the darkened pocket at the far end of the passage.  _ Perhaps Mr. Barrow's just got His Lordship off to bed or somethin'.... _

His sensitive nerves rattled, Jimmy gripped his magazine into a tight roll at his side, which he then used to beat a calming rhythm into his thigh. He could feel the shape of his silver key, knotted tightly around his wrist on its green ribbon, searing his skin, his eyes darting up and down the corridor nervously. He abandoned the flat wick lamp on a table he happened by as he approached the hall's upcoming turn, much more comfortable gripping the key instead.

At once, a sizzle of lighting came paired with a roll of thunder that drummed deafeningly against the eaves. In the sudden flash, the very clear image of Mr. Barrow hung frozen in icy white just long enough for Jimmy to make out something black smearing his cold cheek before snuffing to nothingness. In the faded dark, the weight of the driving water droplets tortured long groans and creaks out of the Abbey's aging structure. Each foreboding noise seemed to make the key grow hotter on Jimmy's wrist, and, panting, he fastened a caged hand against his breast, waiting to catch his delirious heart as it flung itself madly against his ribs.

Each splatter of lightning teased Jimmy with another glimpse of Mr. Barrow, who continued ahead of Jimmy like he was going somewhere specific. It didn't take long for Jimmy to figure out that whatever Mr. Barrow's destination was, it wasn't back up to the attic dormitories. He tailed him down the back servants' stairwell and through the servery, then into the dining room. The electrolyte air crackled at intervals quick enough to keep Mr. Barrow in view, yet mysteriously impossible to catch as he strode into the library. The key impressed itself upon Jimmy's skin with a flare in heat as Jimmy stepped through after him, presenting the blond footman with a scene that belonged in another place – in another lifetime.

The room was packed with rows of small cots, most of which were occupied by a disfigured corpse. Jimmy was quick to notice that they were all servicemen, a detail that triggered a quiver within him. Logically, he knew that they were probably men who had died far from the front lines, but it didn't stop him from imposing Lyle Totten's face on every single one of them. As he staggered down one aisle of Lyles, he squeezed the key tighter, praying to see any other ghost but his, but it was no use. In his desperation, he sought Mr. Barrow, who had taken a seat on a spare bed near the wall. Jimmy hurried toward him, though he found the maze of murdered soldiers dizzying. Mr. Barrow was leaning his forearms on his thighs, hands balled together in the space between his knees; he was saying something too softly for Jimmy to hear.

Just when Jimmy had approached enough to hear the murmur of Mr. Barrow's voice, a mighty chill pierced through him with so much force, Jimmy instinctively cowered beneath his magazine. Slowly lowering the pulp rag to peer over its flutter of pages, he blinked into the darkness, finding nothing but Mr. Barrow leaning closer to the bed neighboring him. Jimmy crinkled his nose, realizing that Mr. Barrow had laced his fingers through the skeletal hand of the soldier lying on the bed. Unlike the horrifying memories that occupied the other cots in the room, this soldier was different – a thin-figured man whose face had been destroyed by mustard gas. Unsure of who he was, Jimmy supposed he had been some comrade of Mr. Barrow's back during the war – for better or for worse. Something niggled him just beneath the surface of his conscious, a curiosity trying to work out exactly why the unknown soldier sparked inklings of familiarity with him, but neither he nor Mr. Barrow discussed the war much – not even with each other. It left him empty-handed.

“I'm sorry, Lieutenant,” Mr. Barrow was saying in a gentle tone Jimmy had dimly established as his sentimental one. “If only you'd let me make it right. If only you – I'd've blown out every star in the sky, ripped the moon off its throne, if it meant changin' the way of it.”

On the cot, the lieutenant twitched, and Mr. Barrow's fingers closed more firmly around the soldier's bony hand. “Careful there, Corporal,” the lieutenant said wanly, his glassy eyes fixed on nothing; “You might get called  _ romantic  _ if you go on like that.”

“I'm sure no one would _ever_ think that of me,” Mr. Barrow told the lieutenant quietly, leaning in close as if they were alone. “Not anyone who could see what a monster I am.”

Jimmy loitered at the foot of the cot, watching and trying to squeeze even the faintest word from his silent throat. He wanted to tell Mr. Barrow he was being hard on himself – as usual. He wanted to tell him that he was anything but repulsive – or at least  _ Jimmy  _ didn't think so. He wanted to tell him how much it upset him to see Mr. Barrow so blue. Instead, he was just gagged with tangles of trepidation and envy. 

A little snort blew through the lieutenant's nose, sending a twitch through him. “I do,” murmured the soldier, lifting his other hand to cup Mr. Barrow's cheek. “The Germans may have taken my vision, but it's only let me see you  _ exactly  _ as you are, Thomas.” His fingers blindly stroked the contour of Mr. Barrow's face, lightly trembling across his closed eyelids as Mr. Barrow held his air inside knotted lungs.

An ache banding through Jimmy's middle nearly suffocated him, and he gasped for the breath he hadn't even known he'd been withholding. He gripped the metal rail that footed the bed at the sight of Mr. Barrow leaning into the turn of the lieutenant's palm, barely grazing it with a kiss, and something hot sizzled through him even as his teeth chattered with cold.

“Irritates you, does it?” came a voice from beside Jimmy. “Or does that bit about him still disgust you?”

Wanting to explode with insult at being accused of such a thing, Jimmy whirled in the direction of the speaker, but found his voice was still dead with fear. He was startled to find himself face-to-face with a spectral being that matched the lieutenant in Mr. Barrow's hands, and with shocking clarity, he was able to fit the pieces together: the blind soldier who had intervened in his brawl with Alfred was this same one – one whom Mr. Barrow seemed to have caught feelings for during his time with the medical corps. Jimmy didn't have to wonder about how it panned out.

Amusement riddled the ghost's face. “ Well, we can't all be like  _ him,”  _ he said, his chin flicking towards Mr. Barrow with such precision, it made Jimmy wonder if the lieutenant was still blind in death. “Some of us simply crack under the weight of it all.”

Quite stirred, Jimmy's lips moved around the shape of a silent word.

Lightning shattered silently through the foreign room, catching Mr. Barrow and his blind soldier as a flashing camera bulb snatches a moment on paper. As the blackness of night poured back into shadowed nooks and corners, Jimmy tried to repeat it, determined to push it through: “Yeah,” he choked out with a voice that scratched his throat like sandpaper. He said it a third time, more bravely still: “ _ Yeah _ .”

In front of Jimmy, Mr. Barrow seemed overwhelmed by his interaction with the soldier in the bed. And yet, something about it gave Jimmy the distinct impression that there was something wrong, like some sort of illness pervaded the space between them – an invisible, intangible thing that ailed their tenderness. It made his stomach burn with the same sort of inexplicable confusion that had been fired to its zenith the first day he'd met Mr. Barrow – the sort that contorted his idea of happiness the more it crept out of its secret box.

The lieutenant's ghostly image lingered beside Jimmy, as if he were waiting for Jimmy to tell more. Jimmy only felt brave enough to be frank because of his confidence that he had tumbled into another waking dream. “I were shattered,” he managed to say, though he had a hard time deciding if he were telling the ghost, or if he were somehow hoping for Mr. Barrow to hear. “It broke me how loud me heart could be – the bang of it always in me ears, splittin' me head. So yeah,” he finished, quenching his tale with the return of his roughened whisper; “Yeah, weak and cracked right through the middle is me, right enough. And still so bloody _scared_.”

As he spoke, it suddenly became very clear to Jimmy what was wrong with Mr. Barrow. Though it had been subtle at first, there was now a thick gum of blood gushing between the fingers that cupped the lieutenant's hand against his face. It ran thick and black down the soldier's wrists, staining his sleeves and Mr. Barrow's fingers, his cheek, his tears.

Beside Jimmy, the ghoul said plainly, “So was I.”

And Jimmy woke up screaming.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some little HINTS here, ohohohoho! I promise the big reveal is coming soon -- though I do hope perhaps you've already got a good idea of it ;D 
> 
> Thanks for reading as always! I hope you're still enjoying this despite the big gap in posting I had! I'm not sure what will happen with the holidays, but anticipate more regular updates again!
> 
> The snippet Jimmy reads is from the Lovecraft story 'The Silver Key'.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alfred leaves for the Ritz; Daisy learns a secret about Jimmy, and Jimmy learns a secret about Thomas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in updating. My beta's life is a little bit on fire and this next chapter contains a big reveal or three. You'll have to read to find out just what!

 

The day Alfred left for the Ritz, Jimmy decided, would be much better spent in the butler's pantry polishing all the silver that didn't really need his attention. Though he had become slightly more forthcoming in interacting with the others in the last few days, he was still glad to have an excuse to be alone while they all made their empty farewells. They would all forget about him the moment he walked out the door – just as it was with every other person who came and went at Downton Abbey. He cared very little whether they thought his avoidance came out of being ornery or mad or any number of wrong assumptions so long as he could be left _alone_.

Unfortunately, that was not to be. His thoughts were just as clamorous as gossipy dinner chatter, and it seemed that no matter how hard he pumped his elbow, each tarnished piece of silver only stood to reveal an inerasable picture of himself. He hated feeling like he was being watched, even if it was just his own gaze he had to avoid: he had come to accept the fact that being alone didn't mean he was by himself – the silver key had educated him on _that_ well enough. He just wished he didn't keep imagining Mr. Barrow's face traced next to his own in the polished metal. It was a painful reminder of the empty hole Mr. Barrow's absence had snipped into his life.

Still, as if to punctuate his grievances, the hullabaloo around Alfred had carried itself to the corridor right outside the butler's pantry, making it impossible for Jimmy to shut it out. He grew agitated, and the silver key he kept secreted in his breast pocket began to pulsate as though it were alive with its own heartbeat, nagging at him to take shelter in the veiled escapism it generated.

His fingers were underneath his apron, a mere two clicks from the key in his jacket pocket, when the door suddenly popped open and Alfred came bumbling in. “I heard you were in here, Jimmy,” he was saying obliviously before he really took note of Jimmy's presence. “I'm not interruptin' anythin', am I?” he asked with a perplexed quirk to one eyebrow as Jimmy jerked his hand back out into the open and pointedly snatched up a nearby platter to busy himself with polishing. Alfred sounded suspicious of Jimmy's sudden work ethic, but Jimmy refused to let Alfred leave with any sort of final victory.

“Well, I just wanted to say so long,” Alfred announced, clearly struggling to sound neutral, tapping the toe of one shoe against the floor. He was squeezing his flat cap with a red-knuckled grip.

Jimmy merely shrugged and scrubbed at the silver platter more vigorously, though its shine was already enough to bounce a bright oval across Jimmy's forehead.

“And I hope you figure out whatever it is that's been botherin' you, yeah?” Alfred went on tentatively when he realized not even his departure was going to be enough to coax a change in Jimmy. He even went so far as to say: “'Cause it might amaze you to hear it, Jimmy, but you were a friend enough to me that I don't like seein' you like this.”

Jimmy snorted, but didn't look up. The platter still was not cleaned to his satisfaction – or so he told himself as he continued to rub nervous circles against the gleaming patina. Annoyed, Alfred was about to say something cross about Jimmy's childish behavior, when the sound of the silver platter clanging against the floor stole his moment. The tall ginger's focus darted from the clattering dishware to Jimmy, who was sitting ramrod straight in his chair, fingers curled anxiously around the edges of his seat.

“Jimmy?” Alfred wondered, his eyebrow furrowing even more as he took in Jimmy's odd look, which was a curious mixture of shock and relief.

But Alfred's voice echoed dimly around Jimmy as he stared down at the shining plate, where an equally startled Thomas Barrow was staring back up at him with a forgotten cigarette smoldering between two fingers. In the haze of all that had been plaguing Jimmy since Mr. Barrow had left, it gave him untold comfort to find his face, even in the middle of all the weirdness. Somehow, it made Jimmy sure that Mr. Barrow wasn't dead after all – that they'd see each other again after all. Jimmy was so overwhelmed by the sentiment, that he very nearly wanted to cry, and had to place a muffling hand over his quivering lips to abate the instinct.

_Miss you_.

His dry, disused voice gave a small crack despite itself, and he realized, much to his shame and horror, that the words had just eked out under his breath, and that the reflection of Mr. Barrow had heard him very clearly – that is, if the expressive shift in his face was any indication. Regardless, it was Mr. Barrow recovered first, lifting a stiff index finger over a smirk before fading into the metallic patina, his image transfiguring into Jimmy's own.

“I s'pose I'll miss you too,” said Alfred, who looked on in perplexity. He wasn't at all sure what he had just witnessed, but as of late, he never quite knew what to make of Jimmy anymore.

Something about the sight of Mr. Barrow had sparked something within Jimmy, igniting his forgotten voice like a fuse that had been left fireside. “Miss someone who _matters_ , you dolt,” Jimmy snapped passionately.

Alfred was so surprised to hear Jimmy speak again, he wasn't sure whether or not he ought to be offended by what Jimmy had actually said. Fighting for an adequate response, Alfred ended up slipping back into the defensive suit he was used to wearing around Jimmy. Slapping his flat cap against his thigh in annoyance, Alfred groused, “Typical, isn't it. I should've known better than to think you'd be nice to me just this once.”

“ _Typical,_ you stood there with your head still stuck up your arse,” Jimmy sniffed as he bent between his legs to pick up the silver platter, unsure if he wanted to find another picture of Mr. Barrow in its polished surface. Particularly struck with how much he took Mr. Barrow's companionship for granted since he'd been left on his own, all Jimmy could think of was Daisy's face, and how content she looked when Alfred was near – and how crushed she was sure to be once he'd gone. “I might be late in tellin' you this,” Jimmy went on as the flippant promise he'd made to Daisy blipped through his memory, “but you got someone who's probably missin' you _already_ , and you ain't even out the door.”

“If you mean Ivy, well, yeah; she's already wished me well,” said Alfred hotly, unappreciative of the way Jimmy still somehow managed to trot out the fact that he was eternally second to Jimmy in everything he did.

“Oh, _sod_ Ivy,” Jimmy cried, gripping the platter and jerking it a few inches in the air in frustration. He had to force himself to stop right before he gave into the urge to fling the silver tray across the room, slamming it back into his knee with a harmonic gong. “You've had Daisy mad about you since the moment you tripped into her kitchen, and you've been too fuckin' busy tryin' to impress Ivy – or _whatever_ – to take a goddamn second to see how good she were for you!”

Alfred's face had turned so red that his hair actually seemed to be the paler tint. “Yeah, well, no help from you, thanks,” Alfred said anxiously, now pulling his flat cap between his two fists. “Besides, if that were true, then she'd have come to say goodbye as well.”

Jimmy couldn't believe he was explaining this to an adult, but he made sure to speak slowly, if only to be rude about it. “So _find_ her, you ninny,” Jimmy enunciated. “Or you'll just be stuck wishin' –“

Alfred opened his mouth to retort, but his answer was overpowered by Mr. Carson's booming baritone, which came echoing from the outside corridor. “Alfred! Let's get a move on. The trains do not _wait_ – not even for _you_ ,” the elderly butler summoned his former footman with a clipped edge.

A bashful expression crossed Alfred's face, though it did nothing to change the sneer that rode across Jimmy's. Slapping his cap against an open palm with a note of finality, Alfred said sheepishly, “Well, I guess this is it, then.”

Growing more displeased by the minute by Alfred's inability to even acknowledge how stupid he'd been about Daisy, Jimmy just curled his lip, the distortion enough to fatten one of his cheeks and squish the side of his nose.

“You – ah – you tell Daisy goodbye for me, right?” Alfred suggested meagerly as he started to back out of the butler's pantry.

“I don't do dirty work,” Jimmy spat before moodily getting up to put the silver platter back into the open cupboard, where he stood with his back to the door as he took his sweet time choosing another piece to shine. He made a point to dally with his decision until he was sure that Alfred had gone. Then he selected a large soup tureen to take back to his chair, where he set to polishing out the black spots only he could see.

 

–

 

Later, the tune of _But I Do, You Know I Do_ startled Jimmy awake with chattering teeth and chilled bones. He wasn't sure when he had fallen asleep, but it seemed he had let the better part of the evening slip away from him. He was slumped in Mr. Barrow's favorite rocking chair, alone in the sparsely lit servants' hall as the lilt of the piano warbled around him with haunting poignancy.

_Except who else knows how to...._

Jimmy immediately stiffened, weighing forward in the rocker so that it was tilted forward on its curved rungs. Preparing himself to find the haunted piano playing itself, Jimmy was almost more gobsmacked to discover that William's presence was not nearly so abstract as it had been in the past. It disoriented him, for he could still feel the silver key weighing heavily in his breast pocket, untouched, and yet there was William, clearly outlined by the light of the silvery moon as he plunked out the ditty. Jimmy was too flabbergasted to know what to say, unsure how one was supposed to even speak to a ghost while his faculties were perfectly in hand.

Almost as if he could sense Jimmy's dilemma, William let the song trickle off, drifting through the back of the piano chair to stand near the rocker. “You're lucky you're _you_ ,” he said by way of greeting, though it was something Jimmy heard between his thoughts as opposed to with his ears. “He _hates_ it when other people sit there.”

But Jimmy had more pressing concerns, already far too distracted with trying to understand why the silver key's dream world seemed to be leaking into his typical one. “What're you _doin'_?” he demanded, gripping the rocker's armrests like he was perched at the edge of a throne.

“Waitin' on you,” said William, the corners of his mouth strung wide between his bulbed cheeks. “You really _do_ sleep like the dead when it suits you.”

“Thank God for small miracles,” Jimmy said testily, not particularly enthused by the possibility that he might still be locked in the throes of a dream, and, if so, that the difference between being awake and asleep was becoming grossly blurred. His fingers bent around the clubbed ends of the armrests as he cocked his head at William, waiting as a prince might do for a jester who'd yet to tell the punchline of a joke. He was awfully tempted to try and provoke it out of William preemptively.

“Would you do us a favor?” William suddenly asked, his earnest eyes shining brighter than the rest of him.

Jimmy bunched his lips pensively, pushing his tongue against the inside of one cheek as he wondered, “Why me?”

William's reply was almost instantaneous, as if he'd known what Jimmy was going to say before he'd ever said it. “Because _he's_ not here,” he said; “And you're in his chair.”

Jimmy glanced around himself as if there was something strange about the rocker that he'd never noticed before. He was almost disappointed that the chair was about as unimpressive as the color that denoted the house's drab servants' passages. He squinted at William, frowning, “And that somehow makes me special?”

William floated by Jimmy, the translucent folds of his private's uniform waxing and waning as he moved through the moonbeams. “But you _are_ special – you should know that by now,” William rejoined with a shrug that faded into the darkness framing the high windows.

“Why's it I keep _hearin'_ that?” Jimmy wondered stubbornly. He folded his arms crossly and glared at the tops of his oxfords, which gleamed with strokes of moonlight upon their patent leather toes. The suggestion easily conjured up the dreamy memory of Mr. Barrow and his mysterious umbrella as they walked together to his funeral. His stomach lurched at the nostalgia it cued.

“Oh, has he told you that too?” William asked idly, again as if he could tell exactly what Jimmy was thinking. He came to rest near the table, right behind the chair Alfred used to occupy as second footman, and then shot Jimmy a piercing look with those damnably bright eyes of his: “Of course he's done,” he decided as he held Jimmy's stare; “Even I can tell how much you thrill him.”

For a moment, Jimmy was confused by the phrasing of William's cryptic musing. Jimmy had been under the impression they were talking about Mr. Barrow, but something about William's diction sounded very distinctly like the unsettling things he'd said in the nightmare in which Jimmy had been drowned beneath Mr. Barrow's bedroom floor. With a quaking heart, he wasn't sure which put him more on edge: one prospect terrified him, while the other seemed from the pages of fantasy. Both were so quenched in darkness, it was hard to really know the difference.

“Anyway, could you talk to Daisy for me?” came William's sudden request. His spectral hands lingered on the scrolling top of Alfred's old chair – _his_ old chair. “She's been cryin' by herself all afternoon.”

“And what am _I_ s'posed to do about it?” Jimmy asked tersely, hunching his shoulders as he glowered at the forlorn ghost.

“Everythin' I can't,” sighed William, very noticeably dejected at the reality of his situation. His hands started to sink through the back of the chair, ten fingers poking through the solid wood like they were sprouting from the furniture.

Despite his grouchy attitude, as Jimmy looked at the despairing William, he found himself softening at the ghost's helplessness. It touched him in a profound way, recognizing the similarity between some of his own frustrated desires – the things he wished he could follow through on, but was too tangled up in his own jumble of pride and cowardice to ever hope to. Grudgingly, he blew a hot puff of air through his pretty lips, conceding, “Right, where's she hangin' about, then?”

William's upswing in mood was denoted by a shimmer that lit up his entire form. He at once started to glide out of the servants' hall, a silent indication that Jimmy ought to get up and go after him. Jimmy trailed William's drifting spirit as he floated towards the stairs. He shot upwards through the central shaft of the stairwell as Jimmy spiraled up the steps after him, all the way to the attics. With hesitation, Jimmy followed him through the men's hall, where William sank through one of the doors at the far end. The hazy cast of cloud-swathed moon made it hard to tell exactly which room it was until Jimmy opened the door behind William and found himself standing in Mr. Barrow's little garret, where Daisy was huddled in a dark corner, sobbing softly into her knees. She barely even looked up even as Jimmy clicked on the bedside lamp, flooding the place in gold.

“What're you doin' hidin' up here, eh?” Jimmy asked plainly as he made himself comfortable on the edge of Mr. Barrow's bed. He tried very hard to ignore the fact that he could still feel William's presence in the room, despite the fact that the electric light had blotted out his ethereal form. He couldn't be sure why – perhaps it was the power of the key – but Jimmy soon found himself very aware that the otherworldly atmosphere Mr. Barrow's room was practically stifling. He felt as though he was teetering on the edge of something ominous.

Daisy didn't directly answer his question, an evasive tactic Jimmy recognized only because it was one he was particularly expert at himself. Instead, she just sniffled, “How'd you know I were in here? Didn't think anyone'd know to come lookin' in _here_.” Briefly, she paused, blinking at him with perceptive, questioning eyes, and then added, “'Cept you, I s'pose.”

“What's that mean?” Jimmy rankled. Something about the way she'd thrown on that last comment had him nervous that there was something to be _implicated_ there, a fear that was only vaguely soothed by the fact that Daisy didn't talk about Mr. Barrow the same way the rest of them did. Though it sometimes made Jimmy wonder how Daisy talked about _him_.

“'Cause you're Mr. Barrow's bezzie, 'course,” said Daisy with a slight perk in her voice at the distraction. Then her timbre dropped as she murmured quietly, “And mine too, I s'pose.”

As she spoke, Jimmy avoided her, lest she catch something unintentional in his expression, and busied himself with the photograph of a youthful Mr. Barrow that stood on the nightstand. He picked it up to study it, pursing his lips as he noted that in the picture, Mr. Barrow wore a dark cravat and a turned-over collar that were both horribly out of fashion. _Must be his granddad or somethin'_ , Jimmy mused as he replaced the small frame underneath the bedside lamp, though he remained captivated by the form of his lips and cheeks, the indifferent, half-lidded gaze. _Looks just like him._

“You're lucky,” Daisy was saying, interrupting Jimmy's straying thoughts.

“How's that?” Jimmy wondered idly, quite glad to be kept from that damnable little portrait. There was something quite mesmerizing about it.

“'Cause Mr. Barrow's comin' back,” Daisy replied, still huddled on the floor with her arms strung around her folded knees. She rested her chin on top of them, a few stray sniffles creeping around her efforts to stay strong. “Alfred's not.”

“It's hardly the same thing,” said Jimmy, lifting a protesting hand, though the immediate shift in Daisy's face made it clear she didn't agree.

“Isn't it?” Daisy huffed, failing to see any problems in her logic. She flopped back against the corner she had herded herself into, her peaked knees collapsing flat upon the floor as she tilted her head back. Her bonnet, which had been barely pinned to her swept-up hair, finally flopped off with the motion. “You were upset when you thought Mr. Barrow were dead. Well, the way it's gone, Alfred might as well b-be dead, too!“

“Hey, now. Chin up,” Jimmy rustled as Daisy bit back another wave of tears. “Stupid and dead is loads different. There's still hope for stupid – even one as stupid as Alfred.”

“But not one so stupid as _me_ ,” Daisy countered in a way that made Jimmy wish he had a handy flask or bottle to offer her. The unhappy assistant cook shuffled up against the wall into a more respectable position, though her chin was still pinched with a frown. “I were just so wound up over how much more he liked stupid Ivy than me – even though it were so obvious she'd never like him as much as she liked _you_.”

“I don't know that it were exactly _obvious_ , Daisy,” Jimmy deadpanned. He was never thrilled to talk about Ivy, especially since his plan in courting her had backfired so much. He had wanted everyone to know what a red-blooded lad he was – especially with the way he'd sometimes catch Mrs. Patmore or Anna eyeing him whilst in Mr. Barrow's company. But in the end, he'd ended up so hilariously backwards in it all, that even _Mr. Barrow_ had offered him condolences, wishing him happy and healthy and with some other girl by the time he got back. Never mind it wasn't about girls in the first place. Far from it.

“Well, it were me who rubbed his nose in it, made him want to get gone. It were me who sent him into the boot room that day you were tryin' to cozy up to Ivy in there,” Daisy informed him with another dramatic sigh. She rotated her feet back and forth on the heel, knocking the toes of her boots together with each inward turn of her ankle. “I hope it don't make you cross with me or sommat – in case it were part of why you never stuck it with her and all. It'd be just like me to've spoiled it for you as well as me.”

Despite himself, Jimmy donned a smirk to match his self-deprecating response: “Trust me, the whole mess caved in just fine on its own.”

Perhaps a bit relieved to hear that at least part of her worries were unfounded, perhaps a bit glad to focus on something else – or perhaps just a mix of both – Daisy found herself full of curiosities about it. “What happened, anyway?” she wanted to know, inching out of her corner and nearer to Jimmy's feet. “I thought you were real keen on her.”

Jimmy puffed up presumptuously, anticipating the excuses he was going to have to make in order to save his pride – and Daisy's sweet innocence. The last thing he needed to add to the litany of things he beat himself up over was tainting Daisy's mind with the details of his dirty desires and confused, secret needs. “Yeah, well,” he said with an unnatural cough; “ _She_ weren't quite as keen as I thought.”

“Ohh, I'm sorry,” hummed Daisy, just narrowly misunderstanding Jimmy's meaning. She had come to rest in the space between Jimmy's feet and the nightstand, rising up on her knees so that she could lean on the mattress beside Jimmy with folded arms. “Well, we can be mates over our two broken hearts, right?”

“Let's not be hasty. No one said _my_ heart were broken up about it,” Jimmy drawled, latching his focus on the mantle piece with blasé indifference. It was unhelpful that doing so only sprouted reminders of Mr. Barrow. He forced out another choking cough: “She were just convenient – a bit of fun, really. Mostly at Alfred's expense, if I'm honest.”

Astonishingly, as Jimmy told her these things, he was encroached upon by a new sort of unpleasantry he quickly realized was shame. He felt shame for the insecurities that had driven him to mercilessly toy with Ivy and Alfred; shame that his inability to be honest with anyone – least of all himself – had instigated the whole sorry mess between the lot of them. He felt shame when he thought of Daisy's crestfallen face at the end of it all.

“So you never even _liked_ her?” came Daisy's next inquisition. “It were all just a big joke to you?” It was hard to tell if she was upset or not.

Jimmy became plum red with embarrassment at being so directly called to attention for what he'd done. “Well, n- _no_. Not a joke, exactly,” he stammered, honing his focus on the royal portrait of Queen Victoria that hung over the fireplace. At random, he picked out one of the courtiers standing with her, a strange face to deliver his clumsy explanations to: “God, if I were bein' true – and I am – it were _anythin'_ but a joke.”

He paused briefly, squinting his eyes at the black-haired courtier he was addressing, his words tumbling out at a progressively slower rate when he realized the picture also bore striking similarity to Mr. Barrow, and was wholly unhelpful in his quest for distraction. “I had... a hundred reasons that....” He had to come to a full stop, now more than certain the courtier _was_ Mr. Barrow – or some relation of his – the longer he stared. Throat dry, he barely managed to squeak out the rest of his thought: “A hundred reasons that just don't matter.” He coughed once, twice; “Anymore.”

He frowned at the photograph: something in the light or the face he had been examining had shifted, and he shook the odd question of Mr. Barrow's likeness out of mind. _You're a proper nutter, Kent_ , he berated himself, a notion unhelped by William, who had selected that exact moment to drift in front of the fireplace with a similar interest in the portrait. Jimmy found it almost damnable the way all those bloody ghosts seemed to share a mind with him at times. It was already concerning enough that they had leaked out of his imagination, while his eyes were still wide open and the key far from hand.

“Was it 'cause you fancy someone else?” Daisy wondered, surprisingly close to the mark, despite being ignorant of all of Jimmy's internal struggling. “Because,” she added with the reemergence of her smiling dimple, “it'd almost be just desserts for that stupid cow if it were true!”

Jimmy snorted, though his eyes kept flicking up at that strangely Barrow-like face. “Ain't it enough that she already thinks I fancy you?” he posited, neatly steering around anything too personal.

But Daisy was sharper than Jimmy gave her credit for, and she was quick to say, “She thinks that _now_ 'cause she's daft. But that isn't why you fell out _then,_ is it?”

_No, it's... it's definitely Mr. Barrow_....

A sharp rap against his knee jarred Jimmy out of his own head. He glanced down to find Daisy casting him a particularly unwavering stare, impatient to find out if she was correct in her guess or not. Jimmy cleared his throat, forcing himself to remain trained on her face, even though it felt like the dark eyes of that courtier were burning twin holes into his cheek. He swallowed, saying, “I just wanted to keep ahead of the curve – a bit of flash in the pan, yeah?”

“Is it to fool someone else?” Daisy wondered with uncanny precision; “Or maybe you're tryin' to fool yourself.”

As if to make herself more impressive to Jimmy, Daisy clambered up on the bed so that she could sit next to him on a more equal plane, meeting him with a determined stare. She looked almost like a different person without her bonnet, lovelier and more mature. Jimmy felt as though he were being flayed alive.

“Or is it 'cause whoever you like is someone you can't be with?” Daisy concluded wisely, squinting at Jimmy like she was attempting to see through his skull.

Of course, Daisy was completely right, though Jimmy was at least certain she was thinking of someone of class, like Lady Mary, or perhaps married, like Anna. Still, Jimmy swallowed again, unsure where he ought to look: this Daisy-without-her-bonnet was a formidable creature that wielded the quick zip of Mrs. Patmore almost dangerously. And yet, as if to tease him in his current state, looking anywhere else in the room only found Mr. Barrow, Mr. Barrow, _Mr. Barrow_. If Jimmy wasn't already sure he was completely insane, he might have known it then.

“Somethin' like that, yeah,” agreed Jimmy dumbly, afraid to even blink. He focused on his hands, which were worrying against one another in a tense knot, knuckles pressing into fingers, rocking against his palms. “But it's somethin' I can't control, so it's best to leave well enough alone. Go with what's easy – the games you know you can win.”

“No wonder you're bored,” Daisy said astutely. She rolled her chin into a cupped hand, which she supported on an elbow pressed against her waist.

“It's the smart bet,” replied Jimmy with a casual shrug that didn't match the topsy-turvy way his insides hung. In the museum of Thomas Barrow doppelgangers that occupied the starry garret, it was as though he were lashed to a kite string as he flopped helplessly on an indoor gale.

“I don't think that's right,” Daisy hummed, also starting to teeter on faraway pensiveness. Her gaze was on the mantle, penetrating through the transparent William as he levitated in the space between, unseen. “'Cause you'll make yourself mad when you start worryin' like that. Let good things pass you by, and then you get left behind.”

“Which is why I'm tryin' to stay well ahead of the races,” Jimmy deadpanned, distracting himself with the little frame on the nightstand, which held the picture of Mr. Barrow's grandfather – or whatever. The poise of the lips were just the same as the underbutler Jimmy knew so well – a kissable shape that burned red the longer the blond focused on it. He said with determination, “It won't be Jimmy Kent out on his arse with a bum heart, believe you me.”

“That sounds an awful lot like runnin' away,” Daisy observed, not realizing she was looking squarely at William as she spoke. “I did that once – twice now, I s'pose. All the time, really. I wish I didn't, but I do.”

“Then you'll know it can get a lot more complicated than all that,” Jimmy bristled nervously. He shifted on the mattress, the nature of their conversation suddenly making him very aware that it was _Mr. Barrow's_ mattress he was sinking into. The particular dip in the springs was yet another distinct indication of Mr. Barrow's inescapable presence, wrapping him up in questions of what Mr. Barrow was like when he was sleeping. He was gripped by the image of striped pajamas and a blue dressing gown with an uncooperative sash.

“Yeah, but it were _me_ who made it the most complicated in the end,” Daisy was saying whilst Jimmy attempted to revolt against his traitorous brain. She nailed him with a fierce look as she continued, “I believed it in me head that it were better, but now I'm just stuck with a bunch of things I wish I could've said while I had the chance.”

“Yeah? Like what?” Jimmy's tone was contrary – distracted even – but he sucked in his attitude when he remembered William. He shot the dead footman an apologetic glance, terrified he might have triggered Daisy into saying something that William didn't need to know. But in William's face, Jimmy was met with the sort of acceptance of fate that Jimmy prayed he would never become a victim to. He hoped he hadn't just made a grave error.

“I'd've liked to thank William properly, for starters,” said Daisy, unsure why Jimmy was brooding so intently at the royal portrait hanging over Mr. Barrow's fireplace. She furrowed her brow at it as she slowly went on: “And I'd've done nicely to tell Alfred how I felt straight away, instead of lettin' Ivy get the better of me confidence. Even if he said no, I'd've said it when I felt it, and I wouldn't be stood here like... like –”

She hiccuped herself into silence, sitting blankly as if she was peering into an enormous void that might deliver the answers sensibility could not. If she had been burdened with the same affliction as Jimmy, she might have noticed William lingering closer to the cot, his ephemeral hands sinking through her knee as if he meant to comfort her. Daisy's cheeks wobbled with cold, idly rubbing her hands together as if she'd just noticed a draft.

Then she cocked her head as an observation struck her: “Isn't it funny how much that footman looks like Mr. Barrow?” she posited, throwing her chin in the direction of the royal portrait.

Stiffening at the alert that the comparison might not have been only in his imagination, Jimmy's pupils darted back towards the royal photograph. The dated styling had made it less obvious to Jimmy at first, but now that Daisy had called his attention to it, he could see the dark-haired courtier's attire was a formal, yet distinctive fashion that perfectly matched another one of the gentlemen in the photograph – just like a footman. _Exactly like a footman_ , Jimmy clarified to himself, distressed at what it might mean.

By then, Daisy had vacated her spot next to Jimmy in order to stand directly in front of the fireplace, inspecting the photograph with her hands clasped behind her back as if she were viewing it in a high-society gallery. Standing so near to it, she had to rise up on her toes in order to really scrutinize the framed image closely. Aloud, she confirmed her earlier observation aloud, “I swear it, Jimmy, that lad could be a young Mr. Barrow, couldn't he?”

“Don't be daft. At _least_ thirty years old, that,” said Jimmy, desperately clinging to the facts that Daisy didn't seem particularly bothered by; “If it was _actually_ Mr. Barrow, he'd already have one foot in the grave.”

Daisy flattened her lips together and heaved out a thoughtful hum. “I s'pose that's true,” she conceded, though she still didn't sound particularly convinced. “Mr. Barrow is still as handsome as he ever was.”

“Too right he is,” Jimmy snapped in such a rush that it was miles too late before he comprehended the weight of what he'd just said. But then Daisy had whipped around with a pretty little 'O' shape decorating her lips, while William gave him the most peculiar look. To Jimmy, it seemed like every face in the room, flesh, photograph or otherwise, was gawking at him, and not even the silver key seemed to promise enough of an escape from such utter mortification. There, in a fit of foolishness, his most precious, perilous secret had been leaked.

It was Daisy who spoke first, questioningly, like she was trying to work out exactly what she'd heard. “You think Mr. Barrow's handsome too?” she inquired, the round turn of her lips melting into more of a sideways 'T', crossed off with the curve of her dimpled cheek.

Jimmy didn't trust himself to say anything, and instead wished for the thick tentacles that had submerged him beneath Mr. Barrow's floor to snatch him down again so he might be strangled or drowned or both. He tried looking desperately to William for aid in such a thing – as William had been there to watch it happen the first time – but the ghost had drifted off to the other side of the room, seemingly disinterested in Jimmy's revelation.

“I s'pose it takes one to know one,” Daisy assessed, once again so very profound in her innocence. She returned to the royal portrait and the half-lidded gaze of the dark footman that wore Mr. Barrow's face. “But in that case,” she went on with determined focus, “you'll _have_ to agree that it's Mr. Barrow! Just look at him! He even does the same little turn with his mouth – you know the one!”

And, loath as he was to admit it, the more Jimmy looked, the more he saw it. But much to his added horror, his staring caught a physical change in the very photographic fiber of the image: a subtle lift in the smirk, which shifted right before his eyes. It was the sort of telltale abnormality that decisively eschewed all doubt that the smug, virile footman in the service of Queen Victoria in 1870-something was the very same smug, virile underbutler in the service of the Crawleys in 1922.

Despite himself, Jimmy crept back to the faded little picture on the nightstand and its post-Georgian styling, suddenly very sure that it was an even younger Thomas Barrow, still looking hardly a day over 25 in 1840's dress. He was just so _dark –_ so unlike Ivy or Daisy, both walking on sunshine – but _dark_ such that his red lips and stellar eyes could tear Jimmy apart.

_Just how old are you, anyway?_ Jimmy wondered at the bedside frame, practically daring it to do something odd. He ingested a huge bite of air as he tried to work it out, discomforted by every solution he arrived at. The steam of his exhalation only kicked him back towards the ceiling, soaring upwards on his own breath, once again the wind-beaten kite with only a string to moor him to safety. The eaves flashed unnaturally with alien constellations that only Mr. Barrow seemed capable of describing, and Jimmy, again, was afraid.

He gulped down another breath to ground himself, and it stuffed him with ballast. Amber light ballooned naturally around the bedside lamp and streamed through the window on moonlit wings. And yet, the mystery only grew more bothersome, and he floundered under the weight of it – his own Christian's burden laden with sin and taboo knowledge.

Just when he thought he couldn't take it anymore, William glided by him, and he sucked in another sharp inhalation. Then he let it out, demanding crisply: “Alright! Out with it, William! I know you _know_!”

“William! Is William here?” chirped Daisy, flitting easily to the topic of her departed husband. She shuffled quickly back to where Jimmy sat on the edge of the bed, anxious to hear more.

But Jimmy barely noticed her as he twisted round on the cot to face the ghost only he could perceive, growing more agitated by the nonchalant way William was opening and closing Mr. Barrow's dresser drawers with his unseen hands – a feat that thrilled Daisy more than anything Jimmy could have said about him.

“I couldn't tell you,” shrugged William, flickering with uncertainty as he reached the lowermost drawer on the bureau. He dragged it open with the heavy thump of the books stashed inside and then drifted away with a certain aura about him that made him seem more distant than usual. It struck Jimmy as suspicious.

“Don't get cheeky with me!” growled Jimmy, who would have followed the line up with a death threat – if a death threat would have made much difference to the likes of William.

William sucked his teeth as he fizzled from where he was, only to wink back into view under the eaves, which Jimmy had just noticed still faintly shimmered with those weird, twisting constellations that always hung over Mr. Barrow. Certainly, he had only just seen them explode with cosmic brilliance in his fit of hysteria moments before, but now it seemed to him that they never truly vanished, stained upon the sloping ceiling as if they'd been painted upon heaven itself. Jimmy stared up at them with newfound bewilderment.

William was crouched, inverted, upon the foreign stars, which pulsated dimly beneath his boots as he loomed above – an odd, ephemeral bat of sorts. It made Jimmy curious as to where Mr. Barrow kept his hidden murder of crows or his unkind of ravens, which Jimmy had drolly determined the underbutler must have stashed _somewhere_ if any of this insane lore was to be believed. He pounded a fist into his open palm, his nose wrinkled with pent-up aggression.

“Y'know, I don't know why I ever stopped to wonder about why he's so taken with you. Just so much _like_ him, you are,” William commented, his tone a lot less volatile than Jimmy had been hoping for. “You really arehis soul mate.”

“You're doin' it again,” Jimmy shouted up at him, careless if someone overheard and thought he was having a go at himself. “That – that _thing_ you do, where I can't tell if it's Thomas you're on about, or if it's that – that....” Jimmy was having difficulty verbalizing the terrible revelations William had shown him in their last somnambulist walk together, as if talking about it with his voice somehow made the nightmare _real._ It was something he was even less prepared to handle than the first suggestion.

The grin that pulled itself across William's triangular face glowed brightly against the cosmic arpeggios that patterned the ceiling around him. It reminded Jimmy of a book that Mr. Barrow had lent him once, about a girl stuck in a weird place that drove her mad. _If_ _I'm that Alice lassie, then William's that spook cat_ , Jimmy thought, his eyes fixed upward on William's chilling smile. He shuddered, uncomfortable with carrying the allegory much further; he didn't like thinking about who – or _what_ – was trying to be off with his head.

“It's a secret – and I shouldn't say,” William replied with frustrating vagueness. “Though I wonder how much of a difference it really makes?”

Jimmy wished he could fly as ghosts do, if only so that he could get his hands around William's spectral neck. It didn't matter if strangling him would have to be nothing more than a symbolic gesture; it was the act itself that would have satisfied Jimmy's compounding frustration. “It makes _every_ difference,” he screeched, just short of tearing his hair out in clumps of gold.

“Maybe,” said William. He had started to recede into the dark constellations, his form like a carved molding upon the sloping ceiling as he began to sink through it. “Maybe not.”

He left Jimmy with the same eerie grin as the cat from the book. Staring up at the spot where William had just been, Jimmy realized he was shuddering uncontrollably. Daisy, who had been watching Jimmy scream at the ceiling like a banshee, was quick to realize that something was wrong, and hurried to Jimmy's side with a friendly hug.

Jimmy barely noticed her arms around him, too focused on the possible meanings behind William's ambiguity. There was a certain, wild thought that wisped up through him like a candle that had flared too quickly, and then was left spooling tendrils of smoke from an empty wick in the aftermath. Jimmy was fairly certain he wasn't quite ready to make that particular leap of faith – not without the obliteration of all doubt and a fistful of reasonable facts.

_And yet_ , he wondered, his attention drawn by the sloppy way William had left Mr. Barrow's dresser – the bottom drawer that now seemed so purposefully left open. He could just see the corner of the thick, buckled tome that he and Daisy had wrestled with that first night they'd camped out in Mr. Barrow's quarters. He thought he heard it spitting strange, alien whispers from within the drawer.

Wresting himself from the circle of Daisy's arms, Jimmy drifted towards the bureau and sat down before it, as if to pray. Daisy curiously followed behind, bent over his shoulder as he carefully lifted the heavy grimoire from the depths of the drawer, setting it upon his lap to regard it with eyes that were no longer burnt by the wakeful sunlight. He ran his hands over the cracked leather, the bumps of his fingers catching on the buckles that held the tome tightly together. Touching the metal fittings reminded him of his silver key, for both of them bore similar designs and contours.

“Jimmy, are you alright?” Daisy fretted after a few moments of uncomfortable silence, through which Jimmy continued to turn the book around and around in his hands with the compulsiveness of a spider spinning a thicket of webbing. “Did William say sommat to you? Was it about Mr. Barrow?”

“Maybe,” said Jimmy, echoing William with eerie sameness; “Maybe not.”

“Perhaps the book is some sort of family heirloom of Mr. Barrow's,” Daisy suggested, trying on her own to figure out what had directed Jimmy to it after their conversation regarding Mr. Barrow's outstanding features. “Maybe Mr. Barrow just comes from a long line of handsome men!”

“Or Mr. Barrow's just got one life,” mumbled Jimmy as he negotiated the clasps, hardly surprised when he found them easy to work this time. “One very, very, long, cursed life.”

Under his manipulation, the belts woven through the silver fastenings slithered free of their hold with a hiss that reminded Jimmy of the demonic whispering that had called him over to the drawer in the first place. The book was awkward to hold, and he had to tip it up against the bureau when he creaked open the front cover. A putrid scent assaulted them as he did so, and a hiss like millions of clicking beetles filled the air, illustrated by an impossible shadow that assailed them like a battalion of phantom scarabs. Jimmy squinted his eyes in fear, and Daisy ducked with a yelp, though the whirring insects slid over them as gloomy apparitions.

When the shock of it had passed, Jimmy cracked the spine once more, as if to tease out any more guardian hexes, which only coughed up a puff of ancient dust. Daisy bent low over Jimmy's shoulder, furrowing her brow at the title page, which bore an almost unpronounceable name, though she attempted it anyway.

_The Necronomicon._

It was underscored by scratchy lettering that spelled out a furthered description of the text in Latin, which Jimmy was able to comprehend – a discovery that made him queasy. It felt like having a stranger locked up in his skull, chiseling information he wasn't supposed to possess into the very bone. When Jimmy rustled the pages, they crackled with age and flicked under his eyes full of mad, rambling passages, eldritch patterns and ghoulish lithographs. They were even more disturbing than the stuff he'd glimpsed in the other weird book Mr. Barrow kept in the drawer. A certain quality to the things sealed in this particular volume that made Jimmy's hair prickle against his goose-fleshed skin, like there was something breathing inside the inked lines.

“What're we lookin' for?” Daisy spoke up, her voice an amelioration in sanity. It seemed that her inability to understand the Latin text was protecting her sense of clarity.

Jimmy didn't answer because he didn't know, and continued to flick through the enormous grimoire with morbid fascination. There were images and snippets that were almost directly referenced in some of the pulp magazines Mr. Barrow had given him, detailing the origins of the Old Ones who dripped down from the black stars and were still worshiped in the shadows. His mind vacated its home and lost itself in churning waters as Jimmy absorbed tales of Yog-Sothoth, who was locked out of the vast universe, and yet still knew where the Old Ones had trod upon the earth, and where They still tread – where They had yet to tread, and why no one could behold Them as They did.

More reading told of horrors that mankind simply could not comprehend, of beings that spelled certain doom if ever they were encountered; there was a depth to the cosmos that existed in a dimension too complex for beings as simple as humans to ever perceive. There were things that crawled through the night, only able to exist in places that were the purest black, things that lingered just beneath the conscious to disturb dreams at large – things that simply should not _be_.

And yet, there were still laborious descriptions of ways to access these unholy planes, or how to commune with the evil creatures that far superseded the basic understanding of mortals. Artifacts with non-Euclidean geometry that had been forged in dimensions not even rooted in the reality Jimmy currently sat in; arcane symbology and impossible science – a silver key that could unlock the space between worlds, and was illustrated to look so very much like the one Mr. Barrow had passed to him in dreams.

Some of the pages were even filled with bars of musical notes that spelled out a primitive but demonic tune when Jimmy tried humming it out, drawing the pictures in his head out of primordial chaos and into stunning reality. His heart fluttered with a terrified kind of joy: something told him They weren't very far, perhaps lurking in even the rolling hills of Yorkshire without anyone being any wiser.

Except for Jimmy – for now, Jimmy was far, far wiser.

The tether of Daisy's voice had grown more remote with each new revelation Jimmy found in the pages of _The Necronomicon_. He turned the pages avidly, more absorbed with each one he looked over, falling deeper and deeper. If he could have been outside of himself for just a moment, he would have been startled at the speed with which he ate through the massive book, a musty breeze wafting up from the fanning leafs.

But as he came across a section concerning Great Cthulhu, dead yet dreaming, he slowed as bits of its rhetoric stood out to him with choice familiarity. The high priest of the Great Old Ones, He lay in His sub-aqueous tomb, waiting for the invisible stars to be right – for the time when He would rise from the waters and rend the world apart with His message of fear. Until then, His children fell from the dark stars and roamed the earth and filled the sea as He sequestered His strength. Cthulhu watched the skies in his dreams, and commanded His brethren with a creature transfigured into breathing flesh by the sheer strength of His visions. His dream-self was His eyes, His ears, His speech – His avenue to those who would heed His Call.

There were two drawings to accompany the words. One was a hideous creature with a head adorned with fat tentacles and immense dragon wings. The other image, which was labeled _The Great Watcher_ and was decorated with scratchy, inkblot stars, merely depicted Thomas Barrow as Jimmy knew him: young, beautiful and greater than the whole universe.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DUNDUNDUNNN. You thought it couldn't get weirder and it did. The big reveal ;P 
> 
> Also, the Necronomicon -- for those who aren't into Lovecraft -- is a fictional grimoire that details the cosmic horrors of the universe. Pretty much everything Jimmy referenced in this chapter while reading it comes from Lovecraft and his circle. Thomas, by the by, is probably meant to be a bit more like the Lovecraftian entity, Nyarlathotep, but I didn't want to confuse with too many eldritch gods ;D


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jimmy is consumed with thoughts of Thomas in dreams more vivid than even his reality.

 

Thoughts of Mr. Barrow consumed Jimmy. Where he had once shuffled his feet, unsure of where he wanted to stand with Mr. Barrow, Jimmy found himself perfectly still, anticipating. Questions as to whether or not he was Mr. Barrow's type had been obliterated, long-standing fears suddenly unimportant: Jimmy might have once been afraid to shun the daylight, but now, he was looking to start. He recognized Mr. Barrow's shadow in everything he did, in everything he touched, like a shape that he'd always known to be there, but now seemed altogether new, terrifying and amazing at once.

He dreamed of him.

Jimmy had imagined Mr. Barrow many times before – even long before the first time his head was haunted by dark shadows – but those had been of a secret, forbidden nature that were best left tucked beneath his pillows, never to be disturbed. Then, since Mr. Barrow's departure, his dreams had been overshadowed by terrors so overwhelming, they threatened to break Jimmy's very grip on sanity when coupled with the fear that went with those _other_ fantasies. Now he saw all of it for what it was: a secret connection he shared only with Mr. Barrow, who understood the things about Jimmy that not even Jimmy himself could fully comprehend. _Now_ , Jimmy counted the seconds until he could hang up his tailcoat and crawl between the sheets to roam the fantastic universe inside his head, where Mr. Barrow was king.

When the knot was tight on the blindfold of sleep, Jimmy was transported to a place that became increasingly recognizable the more he allowed himself to succumb to it. Things about it stood out to him from his own history, crafting a personal labyrinth of crooked pictures and cracked memories that were slowly evolving to be finer than the sum of their parts with every new iteration Jimmy conjured. Still, some parts of the faded dreamworld were unrecognizable to him, and it was in exploring these untraversed planes that Jimmy discovered Mr. Barrow.

The first time Jimmy had wittingly come across him, it had been brief – a mere passing on an avenue that looked how someplace Spanish or Italian might. Mr. Barrow had been walking the opposite direction as Jimmy, and he'd smiled warmly, tipping his trusty bowler at Jimmy as they brushed shoulders. Jimmy had stumbled to a halt in order to do a double-take at Mr. Barrow's retreating back as he strolled on his way. Unable to decide if he ought to follow, Jimmy just stared at Mr. Barrow's umbrella, which swung gaily at his side as he vanished over the horizon, and wondered if its underside still had the same motif of wild constellations when it was unfurled. Then he'd tilted his head back to stare up at the twin moons that ruled the sky above, which was decorated as if the open canopy of Mr. Barrow's enchanted umbrella was the entire sphere of heaven itself. It made him feel positively _lucid_ to behold it.

Another journey to the dreamlands not long after found Mr. Barrow smoking in what seemed to be one of the Abbey's pleasure gardens, where the hedged rosebuds were fat blooms of quivering butterfly wings and spider silk pearls. Mr. Barrow was resting languidly on a courtyard bench with his umbrella leaning between his knees, against the beveled seat. The twist of smoke curled lazily into the discolored air, refracting every strange hue that filtered through its gauzy tendrils. Mr. Barrow ruled at the center of it all, the very clouds that filled his lungs expelling from his lips to create an orchestra of color and shape that danced around him as planetary orbs do their master star. All Jimmy could think, as the dancing fumes transfigured into vibrant crepe paper streamers that fell up, was how _magnificent_ Mr. Barrow was.

“Is it... really you?” Jimmy was brave enough to ask, unsure if he'd ever established the nature of Mr. Barrow's imprint in his head – increasingly realistic or otherwise.

“'Course it's me,” Mr. Barrow said with such ease, Jimmy felt idiotic for even doubting. He gestured for Jimmy to join him on the bench, already luring him with the promise of a cigarette. The spark of fire that he used to light it popped up from between snapped fingers and glowed a vivid pink.

“I guess what me question _really_ is,” said Jimmy as he accepted the cigarette and took a sobering drag on it, “is _who_ are you. Or what, even.” The clouds of smoke that wafted through his parted lips twirled into dresses of merry colors as they danced away. The nicotine tasted of meringue.

“I think you've figured that out by now,” said Mr. Barrow with a vague gesture of his burning cigarette, from which he tapped out a flurry of bejeweled ash with bouncing index finger. His dark eyes glimmered in the strange starlight as he sent Jimmy an interested glance. “I were born of my Master's dreams to wander this planet, to see what His dead eyes cannot see, to hear what His dead ears cannot hear,” Thomas explained when he found Jimmy regarding him stubbornly. “To tread in the shadows where only the Old Ones go – to watch until the black stars have dictated He must return. And then I will send out His Call.”

It was almost exactly as the terrible book had said, but somehow hearing it from Mr. Barrow's lips made it more true. “So you're a... a dream? Of some old, dead deity?” Jimmy tentatively tried to clarify. The image of Mr. Barrow wrapped in a Dracula cape suddenly blinkered into his thoughts and would not abate. A particularly rattling focus on the way vampiric canines might rest on Mr. Barrow's plush, crimson lip made him shiver with something not borne with the weather.

“In a manner of speaking. But one that breathes and roams and hurts just as you do,” Mr. Barrow sufficed to say. He seemed content with leaving it at that, and puffed away on his cigarette with a rather satisfied smile to frame it.

Jimmy's next question was a natural bridge: “Then what does that make _me,_ Mr. Barrow?” he asked, still quite bewildered at the revelation that his best friend was ancient and practically immortal – practically a _god_. Despite all the talk of how apparently special he was, the only thing Jimmy thought about himself in that moment was how puny and unimportant he felt in the grand scope of things – a tiny stitch in the fabric of the universe that could easily be ripped out without even offsetting even the tiniest star's glow a whit. He wasn't even good enough to be more successful in life than bloody _Alfred_ , much less special to a god.

Mr. Barrow chuckled a bit, stretching his inner arm over the curled back of the bench. “Y'know, you really don't have to keep up with all those frivolous human formalities – not here, not when it's just us. I've had so many names over the aeons, it makes me forget who I am sometimes. So I don't mind bein' just Thomas to you. I'd like that,” Mr. Barrow – no, _Thomas_ – blithely informed Jimmy. Though it was not the first time he had made this suggestion to Jimmy, things were so extraordinarily _different_ now, it seemed like an appropriate time to make the change.

Thomas was in the process of lighting himself a new cigarette, which dangled from his ever so red, _red_ lips as he snapped another tongue of flame to life between clicking fingers; the little dancing spark was, this time, an eerie purple. He took a long drag on the cigarette, and then spoke again: “You probably don't remember it, 'cause it were, ah – _quite_ some time ago at this point,” he began around a mouthful of smoke that writhed into shapes dictated by Thomas's voice; “But once, you and I were never apart in this place. You, the architect of this slumbering dimension between life and death, and me – me, a Thing that doesn't belong to either.”

“But Thomas, for me, sleepin's always been as good as dyin',” Jimmy protested, confused to hear that he had his own strange history. “Not until stupid Daisy made me realize that William and that lot are still hangin' about – and blew me bloody mind to bits.”

“And why is it do you think that only _you_ can see them?” Thomas asked. His exhalations of smoke were very distinct human shapes, dancing with each other into the sky. “Why not Daisy, who believes so much more fervently than you?”

“Because I never could before!” was Jimmy's last attempt at clinging to the sense and reason that had kept him safe for so long.

“Maybe you only forgot how,” said Thomas, and straight away, without doubt, Jimmy understood this explanation to be the truth. Thomas leaned back, tilting his chin heavenward, becoming sodden with ennui as he went on. “When you went away, and I was left here alone. Half of what I used to be.”

A seed of self-loathing cracked within Jimmy's breast, bothered that something he didn't even recall doing had caused Thomas pain. He might have been lost in his own head, but it didn't stop him from caring about Thomas more than anyone he had ever known. Perhaps it was because they apparently shared a past that paraded on much longer and more vibrantly than Jimmy had ever realized before. “What happened to me?” Jimmy asked, finding it a little surreal that Thomas would know more about it than he, himself.

“Who's to say, really,” said Thomas, surprisingly without a concrete answer. “Things happen in the real world that affect us here. Maybe you got turned round somewhere and couldn't find your way back. Or maybe you just lost the _key_.”

He said the last bit with a particularly drawling emphasis, and then, shrugging, angled himself away, focused on his cigarette in a way that indicated a litany of particularly somber pondering. He remained so even as he started to speak again. “I search for you lifetime after lifetime,” Thomas said softly, the delicate cut of his alabaster jaw trembling with each careful word; “But every time I find you, you never know me. And I was still alone. So, again, I'd search – and wait.”

His own cigarette forgotten, Jimmy stared down at the tops of his shoes, which he was mashing together at the soles in nervousness. Like the story was being projected through a haze of cigarette smoke, Jimmy began to form a more distinct image of things he'd forgotten to forget. It was as if he'd crashed violently over some unforeseen, heavenly ledge, slumbering stones piled high over the wreckage of the spiraling visions that once described his very being. Living at the bottom of a dark hole with his arms crossed and his corpse shrouded, it was easy to believe such things were false, his eyes glued shut with loam paste. All the time, he had only been dancing with shadows passing as vague shapes behind his eyelids.

Meekly, he let a raspy admission clear his throat, and he said, “Well, I don't know how it'd be possible for me to ever forget _you_ , Mr. – _Thomas_.” He felt slightly weightless as the words tumbled free, like he'd loosened a bit of his pilgrim's burden. Previously unnoticed dirt flaked clean of his union suit, leaving the flannel a virginal white that gleamed in the unreal twilight.

Then, a thought occurred to him, and he snapped his whole posture towards Thomas, although Thomas was still staring off at something only he could see. “Hold on;” Jimmy reached out to grab Thomas's shoulder in consternation, rustling him slightly as he asked, “Are you tryin' to tell me that _I've_ lived longer than this? That I've seen more than me twenty-three years?”

Another wry chuckle left Thomas, and he, at last, righted himself on the bench, his arm still draped over the back of it as he faced forward again. “Seen hundreds more, certainly – whole lifetimes you never seem to remember survivin',” Thomas told him with a hint of dry amusement. “But it's only for you that me dreams come alive – when you're there, that is. That's how I know. My heart beats.”

There was an oddly mysterious implication in Thomas's phrasing, though Jimmy was at a loss as to what it might mean. He crushed his lips together and scrunched his brow in thought. More glimpses of things he had lost were fading into the fore, experiences he hadn't even realized were his. An odd dream of spelunking through cursed temples and across alien wastelands solidified itself into a concrete memory, while a wild sequence that featured unimaginable flying machines and automatons freed itself from the pages of HG Wells and into the scope of plausibility. His skull was leaking for all the ideas that slipped away over time, caking his hair with a gummy residue as it trickled down his face. His heart was whirringon its fragile wires, threatening to shake loose and writhe at the bottom of his rib cage with lurid convulsions, so smitten with creativity was he.

As if the intensity of Jimmy's epiphany was an expected proceeding, Thomas continued on with another pull at his cigarette: “Can you imagine my surprise and joy when you came to Downton lookin' for work?” he said, his gloved hand fidgeting over the turn of his umbrella handle. “I'd been stuck there for... quite a while... wonderin' where you'd turn up next. And yet, there you were, like you'd come to find _me_.” A smile edged up one corner of his mouth with a spell of unexpected pleasure. “And this time, you were me friend. I'm so _happy_ to be your friend again, Jimmy,” he said, carefully offering his mirthful expression to Jimmy. It was odd to see Thomas appear almost bashful, dark eyelashes cast low over his bottomless eyes.

The wildfire smoldering within Jimmy ebbed enough for him to startle: “You mean, we're not always friends?” So much of it was new, it was hard to keep track of it all. How surreal it was to sit on a bench in the gardens and watch everything he had ever touched and seen crumple in on itself as a mere fraction of his true reality. A new moon had dawned, and no sooner had he thought it, did the etching of a third lunar orb trace itself across the sky.

But the nature of its sudden evolution terrified him and he quickly dropped his focus back down to upturned palms and the roll of Thomas's fingers over the crest of his umbrella handle. Impulsively, Jimmy reached out to wrap his hand around the ebony shaft, wishing to be balanced by Thomas and his even keel. But the caress of the smooth wood against his skin only made the visions more perspicuous – so much so that it was almost as if he and Thomas were, for that one, shocking moment, as one entity in their dreamscape pleasure garden. If Jimmy hadn't been so jarringly overwhelmed, he might have eroded with the delight of it; he immediately jerked his hand away, and the thunderous moment passed.

“Since you left Kadath – this place, that is,” Thomas said with a note of melancholy, “we were strangers whenever we crossed paths outside of it. Sometimes you _abhor_ me, hate me – wish me ill for failings I didn't understand. _”_

Each story was so brief and vague, it left the untouched details almost painfully silent, even as snatches of their deeper truths cast patterns through him. Jimmy hated that he knew this without having to hear the details of it, and hated more that he'd ever wanted it. He didn't want it – he would have _never_ –

And yet, Jimmy, knowing full well the vengeful temper he manipulated like Olympian lightning, could still gather a loose concept of the horrific things he might have done to Thomas without even realizing he was. A venomous memory that needed no added clarity to be seared into his mind immediately assaulted him: the horrible night his trembling heart had woken him to pleasure, only to have reality snatch it right back from his lips. He remembered the practical terror that had filled him – that had sent him shoving Thomas away from him for fear of what might befall either of them. He remembered slamming the door and falling back against it, offering the eaves of his darkened garret a wounded sigh and hot tears. He remembered how he'd hoped Thomas would hear the tentative nuances he was only just brave enough to suggest, how much he'd yearned after such an encounter – right from the moment he'd first laid eyes upon Thomas in the servants' hall. How cruel was the world that it was stolen from him just as he'd been given the chance to try? That in any life, the only label the world permitted him to describe with Thomas was 'friend'?

Except it wasn't the first time. Not at all. He was nauseous again.

Balling his hands between his knees, Jimmy hoped to hear that he wasn't just some idiotic shell left upon the earth to torment his dear friend. He said, “It can't have always been like that – not if it were... if it were _really,_ y'know.... me.” He obscured the lower half of his face with a scrunched hand, averting his gaze nervously should Thomas's answer be another shameful truth he'd forced himself to ignore.

“No, not always,” agreed Thomas with a noticeable perk in his tone. Another click of the fingers and spark sounded beside Jimmy – a neon blue – as Thomas lit yet another cigarette, the peppered, citrus aroma of which filled Jimmy's nostrils as Thomas tried to pass it to him. Jimmy accepted it out of habit, but merely let it smolder between his knuckles as Thomas snapped another one to life and started speaking again.

“But you'd forgotten me, and you stopped....” Thomas trailed off into nostalgic silence, back to his animated smoke clouds, which practically told a story of their own. Two twisting tendrils rotated around each other, mingled and then vanished into the wild sky, where the celestial bodies above grew brighter in the rising midnight.

“Well, it's lucky it's played out as it's done this go round,” said Jimmy, his heart inexplicably heavy, like there was alchemy in Thomas's words to change it from dust to gold. “I'm so lucky to be alive enough to know you, Thomas.”

“Not luck,” replied Thomas, the fingers lolling across the back of the bench daring to feather across the curve of Jimmy's furthest shoulder. “Just patience.”

As Thomas's fingertips grazed the thin fabric of Jimmy's union suit, the clumps of rosebush butterflies exploded spectacularly into the night air, their beating wings alive with bioluminescent teal as they rose with the spark of firecrackers overhead. The sparkle burst across Thomas and Jimmy's cheeks, blotting out the blush that had risen to color them both.

As they swirled off into the intangible horizon, they left at Thomas's feet a long, curling shadow with many arms that writhed as tentacles, and a crown like an unfurled bat. Jimmy bent over it, transfixed by its form, learning something more.

“It was you,” he murmured so softly that even the flap of the distant butterflies flew above it. He jerked to his full height, unwittingly startling Thomas's hand at his back away as he met Thomas's starlit eyes with his own, widened blue. “It was you, back durin' the war, what saved me when that trench smothered old Lyle. It were 'cause of _you_ that I weren't crushed to death that day – “

“And a hundred other times, besides,” Thomas interjected with a malaise of careful humor. He smiled affectionately, his hand finally taking shelter upon Jimmy's shoulder. “You're not very lucky, really. Keepin' an eye out for you is quite a task, if you must know. Like chasin' wicked children.”

And once again, Jimmy felt himself grow dizzy with another assault of things he'd buried, moments as tight buds that unfurled into rare and varied blooms to decorate his once stale head. Countless near-misses and chance encounters: most recently, he considered a slip on the kitchen floor that had followed the inexplicably easy pop of a jam jar – and how marvelous it was that he'd managed to only sprain his wrist instead of splattering his brains across the tile. He could be boorish and klutzy, forever behind Alfred in Mr. Carson's esteem, and yet, time and time again, even without this strange circumstance, it was Thomas there to mop up after him.

“This time, it's perfect,” murmured Thomas. A gentle pressure asserted itself upon his scalp as Thomas planted a kiss into his crown of yellow hair, a tentative expression of warmth that Jimmy allowed because he then knew it was safe where they were, so high up that not even God could see them.

If God even existed at all.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for reading this -- those who are still on board this crazy train. I hope it's still enjoyable to you, even if real life has made it harder for me to post on my usual schedule. Hopefully this chapter clarified enough to let your imagination really go nuts 8D


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A love that lasted a thousand lifetimes and will go on for a thousand more.

 

In the wake of all the drama surrounding the kiss Alfred had intruded upon, Jimmy had taken special care in his dealings with Thomas – for obvious reasons. Tentative explorations in his relationship with Thomas were abruptly dropped as he fled for fear of the repercussions. He'd been insane to entertain the very idea of it, and he'd learned the hard way – especially after that Sarah O'Brien had twisted his strings. It had taken all his nerve and a costly reminder of how far Thomas would go to protect him to push beyond the barrier he'd erected around himself. Carefully, he'd begun to pull down the bricks he'd thrown up between them, satisfied that the world would see them as two men thrown together by common differences – protected by the guise of close camaraderie. He might have been rendered too frightened to give Thomas what he wanted when his back had been against the wall, but he was comfortable to have Thomas near without any of the danger the rest brought with it. Friendship with Thomas was perfectly safe. In his head, he had believed it with bruising faith.

But when he floated away with Thomas to Kadath, there was no one but sleepless ghosts to mind them. There was a certain tone to their fantastical meetings that had changed after the whirlwind of leccy butterflies in the twilit garden, when Thomas had shown him his true shape. It had taken Jimmy a few encounters with Thomas in their dream kingdom to fully understand what exactly that difference was, but it was as if he'd had a great revelation when he did – when he'd realized it was the absence of his fear. His hell had been a latched wardrobe where he hid from himself – from Thomas and all the things he was. Now, he desired the dark corners, the creeping shadows; he'd have let sleep rip away the rest of his life if it meant cutting free the secrets he'd locked in his deadened heart.

Most importantly, he'd found what he'd lost in Thomas – time that had been thrown away as crumpled photographs now carefully unfolded and flattened as Thomas regaled him with tales of their crisscrossed past. Thomas, it turned out, was a prolific storyteller, and left no detail discarded when Jimmy asked about his old lives. To listen to it was better than any of Jimmy's fiction: Thomas had so much to say.

They walked through a section of Kadath that appeared as a country lane swept with barley and broken little fences. A scarecrow with a straw hat and a skull for a head grinned at them with an ivory smile as they passed by. In the distance, the ornate angles of Downton Abbey loomed in the center of a sprawling metropolis, like a coronet adorning royalty. Jimmy had his hands looped through his braces, which he wore without a collar, jacket or a waistcoat in the unending summer. Thomas strolled beside him with his ever-present umbrella tucked under arm, quite comfortable with himself, and a belladonna bloom stuck into his buttonhole. The twin moons in the sky gleamed pale, nestled against soft green.  

“I once heard you sing the tenor in _Tosca_ , and I've seen you in the Grand Guignol, red from head-to-toe in gore,” Thomas reminisced. “Ah, you always seemed happiest when you had music or the stage or – I don't know. I s'pose it reminded you of your wild creations out of reflex.” Thomas laughed softly to himself, a sort of silent amusement that reverberated in the back of his throat. “Or so I'd like to tell meself.”

“So I'm not always British?” Jimmy demanded to know, finding the very notion impossible. “Do I at least always _look_ like me? Do you... look like you?” He had a hundred questions that always seemed to spark a hundred more, but he had yet to tire of this new threshold in self-discovery.

“I can look however I want. I'll admit I've tried to appeal to your eye in the past with... quite a wide range,” said Thomas with another private laugh, like he had a secret that was particularly funny. Glancing at Jimmy slyly, his black eyes sliding from Jimmy's midsection up to the whirl of blond hair that crowned his head, he said, “I've found this is the figure I fit best. I feel most myself like this – and you never seemed to notice the difference anyway.”

Jimmy accepted this new piece of information without doubt, though as he watched Thomas with surreptitious glances that slowly evolved into a stare, he found couldn't picture Thomas any other way. It seemed a disservice to Thomas to think of him without his slicked coiffure or his faintly blushed cheekbones – the cut of his unmistakable lips, which he wore so well. A dalliance filtered through Jimmy's head as they walked, buried in his head under blankets of fantasy, and he dared to imagine himself tied up and twisted around Thomas's mouth. His need for it encroached with a renewed fervor that was almost unbearable, every word that touched Thomas's lips enough to elicit a muted sigh from Jimmy. Around them, the garden path floated away on the tide of his desires, the soil crushed into carpet beneath their soles, the trees presenting hung paintings on their boughs as they fell away, replaced by the stone architecture and carved wainscoting of the Abbey's upstairs passageways. The walls denoted the visiting bachelor's corridor in a tease of burgundy. 

Thomas surveyed the change in scenery with blithe amusement, wondering aloud, “What's in that mad head of yours now?”

Jimmy tried to play it off like nothing was out of joint, though he was secretly worried that Thomas had an inkling of what had instigated the shift in Jimmy's imaginings. It was odd how, when presented with a world in which he could invent the rules, Jimmy was still guilty of punching himself in the teeth. He watched Thomas's gloved hand feather across the doorknobs of closed bedroom doors, a mere twist away from the things Jimmy had groomed himself never to want.

The country lane quickly rolled back under their feet, returning them to where they'd been before. Thomas laughed plainly into the green night, which was sparked with wafting motes of glow dust. He was unfettered in a way Jimmy had never known him to be before – a raw iteration of himself that shone only when the moon was watching. For a brief, unclouded instant, Thomas was the Devil, and Jimmy knew that he loved him.

The gloaming petered out to silver, a wash of interstellar hues spilling over the arced canvas. Jimmy and Thomas continued on their path, a thin sliver of neon blue peeking out from between the folds of Thomas's clasped umbrella as they progressed in comfortable silence. The Abbey drew nearer as they ambled on, beckoning them home with secret, voiceless bells that tolled from hidden spires.

In the blackening night, the road split in two, diverting around the haunting silhouette of a crooked hanging tree at the fork. A rotted noose flapped lazily in the warm breeze, wanting for a neck. Thomas came to a stop in front of it, his face hard to make out as he examined the withered gallows pole. Jimmy came to rest by him, befuddled by the shift in Thomas's aura that muddled the very air with melancholy and nostalgia.

“Reminds me of the time I were hung for devilry, this,” said Thomas as he approached the wooden structure, knocking its rotted wood as if he were kicking at a corpse to assure that it was truly dead. “Well,” he added, mostly to himself, “ _one_ of the times.”

The halo of ethereal starlight that petered around Thomas's form cast the pattern of his weird, alien shadow at his heels, which shifted as if it were alive, rasping in the grass. It appeared startlingly natural to him, though he supposed not everyone who might have caught it out in Thomas would agree.

Thomas noticed him staring and casually glanced at his twisting shadow as if it were matched perfectly to his figure, saying, “Not that sort, unfortunately.”

When it dawned upon Jimmy exactly what sort of irregularity Thomas was referring to, it became heartbreaking how blasé he was in mentioning it. Jimmy had gone all this time with ears sliced off and eyes spooned out, but Thomas had to suffer human pettiness with relentlessness. Boldly, Jimmy scooted a bit closer to Thomas – near enough that their shadows bled into one. His shoulder fit against the curve of Thomas's bicep.

“It's only what they don't understand that frightens them,” said Thomas as he stared up at the looming gallows pole. “It always gave me a good opportunity to get away, try someplace new. The world is very big, y'know – at least, when you're standin' on it.” He smiled like he knew Jimmy had been studying him, memorizing every detail. 

“I like that they can't kill you,” said Jimmy as his fingers grappled for Thomas's bare hand in the dark, his fore and middle ones hooking around Thomas's thumb. He tortured himself at the idea of Thomas left to rot from a noose, crying mute tears for days until misery or boredom won out, and he at last closed his eyes. A charade of morbid routine. Jimmy's clutch tightened, and he spat with a bit of defensive enmity: “I like that you're too strong to let any of that shit destroy you.” 

Thomas's lips pressed themselves into a vaguely proud shape, like it pleased him to hear Jimmy be so bold about it, though it was only a quick instant. “There are other ways to die,” said Thomas with a return to his former nonchalance, though he quietly shifted the arrangement of their hands so that their fingers were properly woven together. He flexed his grip, murmuring up at the twirling noose, “Sometimes I think the unravelin' is worse.”

“How's that?” asked Jimmy, matching Thomas's posture.

The look at Thomas presented Jimmy with almost blended in with the night, and was the most sufficient way to describe the little pieces of Thomas that had been scattered through history and blown away by time. “All I am is dust under the stars,” said Thomas quietly, dropping his umbrella to lift his gloved hand to his face. “If I vanish, the dream will end, and He will wake. And so the world will go with me.” 

His teeth caught the fabric of his glove and he gave it a small yank, popping the little button that held it fast around his wrist. Something was freed as Thomas revealed his war wound, which was festered with scar tissue that was crumbled with shards of the universe itself, shimmering with colors out of space that Jimmy had no name for. The hole in Thomas's hand was a wide void that nearly consumed his whole palm, spilling over with a chaos that ate at Thomas's flesh even as Jimmy watched. The glow of a million liquid galaxies trembled and spun within it.

“It's gettin' worse,” said Thomas as he turned his hand over as if he'd not looked at it in a long while. “I s'pose I'm losin' patience with the world.”

“I don't blame you,” Jimmy mumbled, transfixed by Thomas's rotting hand, which was somehow beautiful to him even in its arcane disfigurement.

With the curiosity of a child, he cupped Thomas's wounded hand with his free one, finding pleasure in the strokes of power that radiated through him at the touch. With each wave, another secret was peeled back, exposing him to elements that brought him to fresh levels of understanding – to a clarity that drew him closer to Thomas still. As if a prayer from deep inside him were rising to his lips to guide him, he carefully lifted Thomas's decayed hand to kiss the knuckles, squeezing his other hand as a flame began to grow inside of him.

“But for you,” Thomas murmured as he watched, his voice surrounding Jimmy like it was being stirred around him on a breeze. “I can dream in peace when I dream with you. And a little death isn't so bad.” 

Jimmy looked up at Thomas, his lips crushing across Thomas's hand as he lifted his chin to do so. Hand in hand with Thomas in the midnight hour, there was a flutter in Jimmy's heart when it dawned upon him that it was only Thomas's adoration of him that had kept the mad reign of the terror entombed at the bottom of the sea. It was strange to think that Thomas, who could break the world on a whim, had tied such a fate to a string that dangled so haplessly from Jimmy's fingers, which were bent with a fear that practically crippled him. And yet, it was mysterious and wonderful to be touched as though he were something precious – a sensation Jimmy had thought he was dull to. Now, the fog had died away, and all he knew was the beauty in Thomas's face: Thomas, the destroyer, handsomest in strange and stranger places, was also his salvation. 

“Does it make you afraid?” Thomas asked softly, as if he could hear the revelations billowing through Jimmy. “Do _I_ make you afraid?”

Motes of faerie light danced around Jimmy as he breathed, “No.” Their hands, still wound around each other, had fallen to their sides; Jimmy pulled Thomas nearer with a slight twitch of his arms, and the twirling star motes rose in an anticipatory crescendo. “No,” Jimmy said again as he touched his forehead against Thomas's shoulder, which pattered softly with an almost silent heartbeat.

The tear in Thomas's palm imprinted itself upon the small of Jimmy's back, burning through the linen of his shirt as he carefully disengaged his hand from Jimmy's in favor of sliding it around the blond's waist. Curling the fingers of his other hand beneath Jimmy's jaw, he tilted Jimmy's head away from his chest, the left corner of his mouth twitching upwards at how pliable Jimmy had become.

“We live in a beautiful world, Thomas,” Jimmy whispered, intoxicated by the heady aphrodisiac perfume of tobacco and belladonna petals that clung to Thomas. Jimmy misplaced that they were miles away from each other, high above the sky.

Softly, Thomas agreed: “Don't we.”

Then he bent in to kiss Jimmy, and this time, Jimmy didn't leap back in fear. Instead, he breathed in the affection he had missed in Thomas, a flavor he'd wanted to try but for the gag of reality that had suffocated him. Cupping Thomas's face, his lips fell apart to receive the forbidden communion. He nibbled Thomas's lower lip; his tongue coiled around Thomas's, tasting an eroticism Jimmy had never known a mere kiss could possess. The crossroads beneath their feet became spectral and distant as he and Thomas drifted away like clouds and melted together.

The wind died away, and the touch of Thomas's withering hand was hot against the flesh of Jimmy's back. It was the only pinpoint of recognition Jimmy had, fogged with a disorientation like he'd just awoken from a pleasant sleep. His lips were still stained with a hint of Thomas, which he lapped at absently as he stretched, soon aware that he was flat on his bare stomach across satiny sheets that didn't belong to him. He was in a red room with ebony trimmings, naked upon a bed that belonged to an upstairs room at the Abbey, and very aware of how hard his anatomy had become in such luxury.

He groaned and tried to shift, only to feel the heat of Thomas's wound impress upon him more, as if to pin him back down to the mattress. Then he was aware of Thomas's lips, which singed his flesh with another sort of heat as they kissed their way down the ridges of his spine – lips that no longer frightened him, but instead filled him with bliss. A wet tongue traced the contours of his musculature, lapping at the cleft of his buttocks, scoring him with pleasure as it dipped more intimately between the cheeks. A purr unspooled in Jimmy's throat as Thomas kissed him in places he'd never known he needed to be touched. He quivered on the edge of an orgasm that was far too intense to be the work of mere fiction. He could barely stand how much he wanted it. 

Then, just as the thrill of release was about to overtake him, Jimmy's eyes snapped closed, and he hurtled awake on the crest of a long moan that smothered itself into plain linens. Adjusting to the stale darkness, Jimmy threw himself over onto his back and found himself alone in his usual cot, surrounded by walls were cold with barren familiarity. He sighed in frustration, mashing the heels of his hands into eye sockets as he desperately grasped after even the slightest glimmer of the tryst he and Thomas had been about to share beneath the cover of dreams. Unable to even piece it back together the way he would have liked, Jimmy curled up beneath the blankets and realized he missed Thomas more than he knew he was allowed to. What had just happened wasn't just some wishful fantasy: it had been far too _real_ for that. He could still feel the burn of Thomas's hand against his back.   

Behind him, framed in the vanity mirror, Thomas watched the Jimmy toss and turn in frustration. “Goodnight, my sweet prince,” he mouthed as he blew a satisfied kiss over his fingertips; “I'll see you again soon.” 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for reading! Unfortunately I've been really, really busy so I've caught up to what I've written so far. Hopefully I'll have more soon. Thanks to everyone who's been reading so far! I hope the wait for a proper Thommy kiss was worth it ;D 
> 
> Now the plot can really start? Hahaha. Thomas is coming home <3


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thomas finally comes home.

For the duration of the voyage back to England, Thomas was addled with anticipation. He had grown so used to the state of things, he had accepted that Jimmy had been eternally severed from his own imagination, and that Thomas's curse was to wander forever in the blond's wake until loneliness eroded him into oblivion. He had thought it almost funny that he should come across writings pertaining to Jimmy's forgotten whimsies in those _Weird Tales_ pulps, and funnier still that he should gift them to Jimmy with a sense of irony about why. But then Jimmy had become enthralled by them – and now he'd woken up to his dreams. _Now,_ Jimmy had stopped being afraid, his fear replaced with a sense of safekeeping that had snapped centuries of suppression. In Kadath, Jimmy was in full flower, blooming with desires that leaked out in technicolor and chased the rest of the world to black.

It had been subtle at first. Times that Jimmy caught Thomas looking in on him from behind glass and in polished silver were regarded not as a trick of the eye, but as more of a tease. Knowing that Jimmy could watch him _watching_ paralyzed Thomas with erotic stupor, and it was all he could do to keep from dragging Jimmy into an eternal sleep where he could feed his insatiable lust. Not that it mattered: Jimmy had grown increasingly eager to drown himself in soma, hastily retreating beneath refracted shadows too ephemeral for anyone to see the truth and nature of his heart.

They kissed in every environment Jimmy could conjure – in rooms that existed all over the Abbey, and some that were only cobbled figments of his imagination. But Thomas's favorite was always the fancy red bedroom that their initial kiss had unlocked, and it was there that Jimmy first let Thomas undress him. After finding such comfort in small romantic gestures, the unhurried privacy in Jimmy's head made it an easy progression: Thomas, perched on the edge of _their_ bed, carefully reeled Jimmy into his arms and unwrapped him without much persuasion. Thomas freed him of his braces – his shirt, his trousers – and brought Jimmy to a whole new plane of euphoria. Jimmy swung loose on an untethered string, plummeting so quickly into Thomas, he seemed to lack any intention of catching himself. 

Despite all the turmoil that constantly surrounded him, Thomas was a gentle lover, driven by ten thousand years of lost passion for Jimmy. His every caress was a peaceful chord that vibrated through Jimmy like an unexpected song. It was just a little death – only a little – and in his time of dying, Jimmy was ready to roll into a coffin, cross his arms and lay with Thomas and the stars. Thomas gleefully thought of it as a funeral for unpleasant days every time he conquered Jimmy, even as the blond's lungs screamed full of air, like he'd just learned to breathe again.

The ecstasy of their love seemed to carry on into infinity, a bond which defied a concrete explanation. Jimmy drank it in like it was his ether, unmade and unraveled by all the ways Thomas knew how to touch him. Sometimes, Thomas invited Jimmy to take the lead in their explorations of one another. Other times, a glance at the nearby mirror would find that Thomas's reflection had vacated his reversed world, which didn't seem so far removed in Kadath, to climb through the glass and into bed with the pair of them. Wrapped between Thomas and his twin, Jimmy lost where he ended and Thomas began and let them both adore him. Then Thomas's shadow, which caressed Jimmy with its odd shapes and undulating appendages, would blanket Jimmy as he curled up with Thomas, as if to soothe him in the afterglow with its darkness.

For Thomas, with one foot in life and the other in death, his conscience locked somewhere in slumber, there was a level of intimacy in their nightly sojourns that went beyond the realm of fantasy. Still, even the deceptive moonlight wasn't enough to keep Thomas from yearning for the moment when he would be reunited with Jimmy at last, eager to feel the pulse in his flesh, the spindled wisp of his flaxen hair – the blood in his lips. Each morning, he opened his eyes to count little nips and bruises that had been left by his phantom lover, dizzy with echoes of each panting moan and sigh Jimmy elicited from him in the night. The sticky remnants of their fantastical trysts cloyed at his plain reality; the sunlight burned him worse than ever before, enough to make him wan with illness.

But as he sat in the front seat of the open-top Rolls Royce with Lord Grantham's chauffeur, hurtling ever closer to Downton, Thomas's stomach was aflutter with more emotions than he could ever hope to count. Their return to England was premature, and would certainly be unexpected, which only added to Thomas's anticipation. He hadn't written to Jimmy since they had begun meeting in Kadath, but he was still riddled with nervousness at how Jimmy would receive his homecoming – what things would be different than they were before he'd gone. He could barely keep track of their approach to the big house as his thoughts wandered, poring over the ten thousand ways he could imagine kissing Jimmy properly. He bit his lip at the idea of what it would be like to have Jimmy kiss him back just as fervently, and swallowed when he thought of what they might get up to by moonlight.

As the Rolls pulled around the gravel drive, it was evident that Lady Grantham's fundraising bazaar was in full swing. Almost every member of the household was present on the green, from the Crawleys and their high society friends, all the way down to Daisy, who was loitering by the punch bowls with none other than Jimmy. The sound of the motor called the instant attention of everyone there, but it was only Jimmy's face he saw when they looked. Even with the many yards between them, Thomas could tell Jimmy was just as intent upon him.

Most of the excitement was centered on Lord Grantham as he exited the Rolls, surrounded by his family as they happily kissed him in welcome. Umbrella in hand, Thomas slipped out of the front seat with much less fanfare, though he found himself face-to-face with Jimmy the moment he drew around the car to collect the cases from the back. He hadn't realized that Jimmy had been carried over with the others, and the sudden nearness of him nearly bowled Thomas for a loop. Even their blissfully intimate dreams couldn't compare to the genuine article: Thomas had to steel himself in the face of propriety at the reminder of just how breathtaking Jimmy was in person.

Jimmy wasted no time, though Thomas couldn't help the private notion that the footman was trying to obscure the quick once-over he cast upon Thomas: “Well?” Jimmy demanded with one of his heavy-lidded flicks of the eye; “How was it?”

“Very modern,” replied Thomas with a bit of a squint, though his insides were tormented like he was passing a secret lover in the street. He pulled one of the cases off the back rack: “Very interesting.” He grabbed another case by the handle, hoping he at least looked much more casual about seeing Jimmy than he felt: “How was it here?”

“Not very modern, not very interesting,” Jimmy rejoined with his usual edge of sarcasm, despite the fact that they both knew the opposite was true. He cleared his throat and passed a quick look at Molesley, who had been hovering nearby without any particular purpose, and then gave a quick nod towards the alley leading round to the back of the house, clearly intent on using the distraction of Lord Grantham's return as an excuse to skive off. “C'mon,” he urged as he started to stride in that direction. Thomas shot Lord Grantham a wary look over his shoulder as he followed Jimmy, happy to make his own escape; the Earl was chatting with Mr. Bates in that annoyingly chummy way of theirs.

“I swear they're already complainin' about me,” grumbled Thomas once he and Jimmy were out of earshot.

“Can't please 'em all,” shrugged Jimmy, whose arms swung merrily with each step. “Since when did you care anyway?”

“I _don't,”_ Thomas insisted thoroughly; “But I'd rather not let 'em have an excuse to line me up for the firin' squad, neither. Just 'cause I don't curtsy and bob at His Lordship's every sneeze like _certain_ people do.” Thomas crinkled his nose with distaste and licked chapped lips, while Jimmy laughed from his belly at the succinct commentary. Thomas frowned, adding, “Sometimes, I can't help but think they're _huntin_ ' for a reason.”

“At least you can stand on your own two feet without the help of His Lordship – or a cane,” Jimmy quipped with a cruel little snigger, which Thomas found musical. He had sorely missed this kind of banter, a blessed reminder that he had an ally in his eternal struggle against the house and its maddening hierarchy.

Pricking his tongue on a sharp canine, Thomas said, “When I get the sack, I fully expect you to throw a fabulous tantrum when you walk out after me in protest. A proper fit with lots of smashed china and obscenities and stompin' about. Then we'll sail back to America, and I'll show you New York – take you round to Coney Island and that.” Thomas grew wistful at the notion, tilting his chin towards the strata as he imagined a life on the run with Jimmy, living as they pleased. He could just catch the streamers of Brooklyn kites imprinted upon the English sky above, and he sighed, “Who knows – I might enjoy it then.” 

“That bad, eh?” Jimmy smirked as they walked, the gravel crunching beneath their shoes with much more poignancy now that they were getting away from the merriment and hubbub of the bazaar.

“Not all bad,” admitted Thomas, daring to give Jimmy another surreptitious look. Jimmy was as difficult to read as ever, his demeanor just as Thomas had come to know it in the aftermath of the incident under the bridge. He wondered if he ought to bring up the one subject he was dying to address, all the while screaming inwardly that he ran the risk of destroying everything if he went at it incorrectly. He decided to just keep on in hopes that he might spark the topic: “New York is like a whole other world. You come to expect the unexpected there – and I learned a lot since I've been away.”

Jimmy stopped as if he'd just been given an unexpected shock. “Like what?” he wondered vaguely as his feet slowly peddled back into motion, though he moved with a lethargy that befit someone who had suddenly realized he had become lost. His gaze flitted about – up to the tallest gables of the Abbey, down at the cases swinging at Thomas's side – but flitted away in nervousness every time he lingered on Thomas's profile for too long.

Sucking in a mouthful of crisp air, Thomas longed for the cigarette he couldn't retrieve with his hands full. He exhaled slowly, and articulated, “Oh, I don't know. The sorts of things that most people ignore in their petulant fears. Secret societies that praise the creatures of the deep, and monsters that lurk in subway tunnels like buried, homesick aliens in a strange universe.” He fixed his attention on Jimmy, while Jimmy watched the gravel dirtying the toes of his shoes, and said with pointedness: “Love lost in ugly places.”

Again, Jimmy slowed to a halt, a hand swiping out to catch himself on a nearby windowsill. He shifted enough so that he was facing Thomas, framed by the curtains inside the recessed glass panes behind him; the polished surface caught the cloudy empyrean and made Jimmy look as though he was tumbling through the sky. He seemed hesitant to acknowledge the particular vocabulary Thomas had used, though it was evident he was thinking about it all the same.

Something alien chewed through Thomas's chest, disrupting the faint tremble of his pulse. Bending at the knee, he set down the pair of cases on either side of his feet, hooked his brolly over one arm, and was halfway through his coat in search of that much-wanted cigarette by the time he straightened up again. His downcast eyes shadowed behind the cup of his hands as he lit the cigarette, he asked in a low voice, “Or are you only to think of me like that when we're asleep?”

Thomas could tell Jimmy was nervous: the blond leaned heavily against the windowsill behind him, a finger tapping against the limestone as he ostensibly regarded the dull line of smoke curling from the tip of Thomas's cigarette. Tentatively, Thomas took a step beyond the gateway of suitcases he had planted in the gravel; he reached out for Jimmy but quickly redirected his aim when a sudden fear of rejection gripped him. He flattened his palm against the stonework instead, leaving Jimmy with only one avenue of escape from the window niche.

His stare smoldered behind tobacco fog as he leaned in a little bit nearer: “Or maybe your dreams are just an interruption to you?” He took a drag as if to oil the rattle of his rusty heart, which clicked like a ticker tape wound and threaded through his ribs, and then said, “Because they're very real to me.”

There was a decadent flush to Jimmy's nose and cheeks that betrayed him against the gray atmosphere. “I could lie and say to you that it were just so,” Jimmy mumbled as the tip of his brogue briefly engaged the toe of Thomas's. “But you'd know it weren't true, and it wouldn't make you any less....” The end of his sentence was nearly swallowed entirely: “...any less lovely.”

The unsteadiness in Thomas's breast fluctuated, and he dared to take another step towards Jimmy, close enough that his open flaps of his coat ensconced Jimmy's knees. “Then what's wrong?” Thomas asked, slipping the two fingers that pinched his cigarette beneath Jimmy's chin so that he could see his face; “You aren't happy to see me?”

“Christ, no – nothin' like that!” Jimmy cried in a burst of passion that belied his odd behavior. Then, hesitating, Jimmy stared at the tentacle of smoke burning at the tip of Thomas's cigarette as he struggled with his words. “Nothin' like that at all,” he repeated more softly. He began tracing abstract shapes against the windowsill, and then quietly confessed, “I missed you more than I have a right to.” He cleared his throat and peeked up at Thomas through drooping eyelashes, “So I'm very happy indeed. Seein' you again. Like this – _here_.”

In one fell motion, Thomas flicked his fingers from beneath Jimmy's chin and pitched his cigarette, mindless of where it landed as he closed the gap between Jimmy and himself. Brazenly slipping a delicate hand beneath the cut of Jimmy's velvet tailcoat, he touched Jimmy's hip and leaned near enough that their noses touched and their oxygen became perfumed with a mingling of brilliantine and tobacco. “Then don't tease, and let's have a proper hello,” Thomas whispered thickly, invoking a little whimper from Jimmy.

Then, with lips that grazed Thomas's as he spoke, Jimmy recoiled slightly. “Wait, wait – _Thomas_ ,” Jimmy interrupted, though his rapt body language served as a contradiction to his feeble protest. Jimmy glanced nervously up the drive, back towards the front of the house, where the bazaar was just visible from around the corner. “This world's too frightful a place for any of that,” he mumbled, even as he reached up to grip the wool lapel of Thomas's overcoat. “Anyone could come right round that bend and – and _see_.”

Thomas withdrew a bit, pushing the brim of his bowler back across the crown of his skull to run the heel of one hand across his oiled hair. He bit down on an ironic chuckle as he removed his hat, smiling privately at it as he pressed it against his chest and marveled at how so many of the little details about Jimmy revolved around a terrified breed of sensibility. So much between them had flickered high and low with the quickness of a sparking Wonderlite, and it had often left Thomas trailing behind in blustering confusion, questioning if he was the foolish one after all. He had prayed that a shift in the planets, the turning of a key in the lock – a little extra starlight upon them – might have been enough to pull the fear out of Jimmy, but it seemed to have laid its roots deeper than he'd imagined, festering in a mucky soil of pain and self-control. 

“Sod the rest of 'em. It's just the two of us that matters,” Thomas gently reminded Jimmy, not wishing to be pushy about it in spite of everything. He held his bowler by its bulbous crown and tapped its rounded brim against Jimmy's cheek to hold his attention. “But you're clever enough to know how to take advantage of times when the cat's away,” he said, his second approach towards Jimmy's lips hidden behind his hat; his words feathered across Jimmy's chin in soft waves: “Maybe you could come help me – ahh – _unpack_.”  

The suggestion was a heady one, and Jimmy rolled his bottom lip between his teeth as his expression took on a lampshaded quality. “You're a dangerous man, Mr. Barrow,” Jimmy said with a little quirk to the split of his mouth, his untamed desires pinkening his skin.

“I thought you liked a little bit of that,” Thomas smugly returned, licking his lips with a tip of wet tongue as he tilted into the angle of Jimmy's face. He could smell the citrus peel and gin that flavored whatever Jimmy had been drinking before.

With drooping eyelids, Jimmy murmured back, “S'pose it's a bit obvious then, eh?”

“Just a bit,” agreed Thomas, a mere twitch away from kissing Jimmy's plush lips, which were split expectantly.

They didn't get much further than that. A sudden exclamation of, “Oi, there you are, Mr. Barrow!” bit through the air, startling Thomas and Jimmy away from one another. Thomas jerked his bowler away and backstepped into the safe zone between the two cases he'd been carrying, his sole relief the realization that it was only Daisy who had stumbled upon them. He fumbled the hat back onto his head and then nervously groped through his coat for another cigarette, cursing the cruel fates for fueling Jimmy's terror-stricken reality. His frustration rang like the churn of the ocean in his ears – a hissing whisper of sea spray and alien tongues.

But he tried not to let it completely sour his mood, as Daisy didn't seem to have noticed the secrets that had been so hastily shoved into his bowler. Besides, she was harmless and undeserving of an attitude that would likely just make her question things further. He lit his cigarette and offered one to Jimmy, who eagerly snatched it up.

Jimmy was just flicking the lighter against the tip of his cigarette, which had taken him numerous tries to pull off with his nervous hands, when he noticed that Daisy was still there, blinking silently at them with a pensive dimple in her cheek. He took two quick puffs on the cigarette and then held it out to her, asking cheekily, “Fancy a smoke, Daisy?”

Thomas laughed openly at the idea, especially when he saw the shock that covered Daisy's face at the suggestion. He started to root through his coat for a third cigarette out of sheer amusement, while Daisy stammered, “I – I better not.”

“Aww, don't be like that. Have a go,” urged Jimmy, who almost sounded like he was trying to bribe her with distraction. He slipped away from the side of the house and strode towards Daisy, holding the burning cigarette out to her more emphatically. “Got to do _somethin'_ to celebrate Mr. Barrow's homecomin', yeah?” he coaxed her, though he was riddled with a tone of affection as he spoke about Thomas's return to Downton.

Daisy almost became cross-eyed as she focused on the fiery cinder beneath her nose. “Mrs. Patmore would be furious if she caught me,” she fretted with a quick glance in the direction of the delivery yard. “She says it's unfeminine.”

The laughter such a comment from Mrs. Patmore triggered in both Thomas and Jimmy was perfectly on cue. Thomas glanced up in time to find Jimmy handing him a sadistic little smirk, and they trembled together with dark amusement. As they settled, Thomas said, “Once won't murder your ladylike charms, Daisy. _Live_ a little.”

Perhaps in an effort to fit in with the rude boys, Daisy only had one more attempt at declining before she eventually took the cigarette from Jimmy. She held it with reluctance, as if she wasn't quite sure what to do with it, and then looked to Thomas and Jimmy for guidance. Thomas was just handing Jimmy a fresh cigarette, which he took the liberty of lighting for Jimmy once the blond had the filter clamped between his lips. Attempting to emulate the same technique, Daisy took an amateurish pull on her own, sucking in a wad of smoke that choked her into a fit of coughing. Both Thomas and Jimmy fought to stifle the automatic snickering that came at her expense.

“Is this what you two are always gettin' up to on your own together?” Daisy wheezed, her eyes so watery from the smoke, she missed the way her comment changed Thomas's glances in Jimmy's direction to something more private.

“Even gentlemen can have secrets,” Thomas said wryly, reveling in the shape Jimmy's lips made when he sucked his cigarette and blew out the smoke – like a crushed, red flower whose petals glistened with morning dew. The image called to mind the way those same lips looked when they quivered with the secret ecstasy only Thomas knew. The promise of heaven with Jimmy was more than enough to keep Thomas hanging on the bell until the sky came crashing down and the ocean ate the moon. 

Almost simultaneously, Jimmy was saying to Daisy with no shortage in suspicion, “Why? What'd you _think_ we'd get up to?”

Even with the twist of cigarette smoke tingling her nostrils, Daisy managed to retain her usual inquisitiveness. With a much more experimental pull on her cigarette, she sufficed, “Well, I mean, it's only five minutes back, and look at the pair've you. Already sewn at the hip, you are.”

“So?” Jimmy wondered with an ounce of trepidation.

“So, must've gone runnin' to each other,” said Daisy, who still hadn't quite gotten the hang of smoking; “But I'm not a bloke, so I don't know how lads are when they're fond of one another.”

Far more collected than Jimmy at this particular line of questioning, Thomas leaned casually on the pointed spear of his umbrella and smoothly said through a film of nicotine vapor, “S'pose it's not much different than anyone else.” He was careful to deflect the truth with a bit of redirection, adding, “Probably just as you are with any friends of yours.”

Daisy dug her heel into the gravel at the mention of her social life. “I don't know about all that, Mr. Barrow. No one's quite so keen on me – not like _that_ ,” she informed him, though she seemed hesitant to review the details Thomas had missed in his absence.

“Like what, exactly?” fretted Jimmy, who was distractedly fiddling with the twirl of yellow hair that curled over his brow. Behind the cover of his open coat, Thomas's hand twitched against Jimmy's, catching his fingers for a brief, soothing moment.

“Y'know, special friends – affectionate-like and all,” she elaborated as she twisted her heel back and forth into the ground with agitation, slowing only as the dawn of some previously unrealized idea came upon her. Her cigarette bent between her knuckles as she scissored them together, suddenly addressing Jimmy with her findings: “Is that why you think Mr. Barrow's handsome? 'Cause he's your special _kissin'_ friend?”

At once, the color bled from Jimmy's face and dribbled through him, seeping into the gravel at the revelation that Daisy had seen everything – or worse still, _heard_. A peculiar sort of hysteria overtook Jimmy as he flung his half-smoked cigarette into the dirt and started moving with a mechanical agitation. Thomas instinctively wanted to insert himself into the situation, to soothe Jimmy that it would be alright, but even he knew the danger of making a precarious situation worse. Which was why he didn't attempt to stop Jimmy when he made a grab for the two cases at Thomas's feet, muttering, “Let me just take those for you, Thomas. I'll bring 'em in.”

Not lingering for even a response from Thomas, Jimmy hoisted the cases and marched with almost comic speed towards the delivery yard behind the house. Thomas and Daisy watched him go, Thomas with a wistful sigh stuck to the roof of his mouth, and Daisy with mystified confusion at Jimmy's abrupt shift in behavior.

“I didn't mean nothin' by it,” Daisy said at length, creeping up to stand next to Thomas once Jimmy had vanished into the distance. “He's been in a right state without you, and it only just made sense _why_. I don't know what's got him so worked up.”

Still wreathed in cigarette smoke, Thomas shot her an amused look. “Careful who you say that to, Daisy,” he warned, though he was hammered with a backwards sort of delight to hear that Jimmy really did want for his company. “Some people get terribly uncomfortable thinkin' about stuff like that.”

“I don't understand,” Daisy hummed through pursed lips.

“Neither do I, Daisy,” Thomas agreed, squinting up at the sun's accursed brightness overhead and polishing the curved handle of his umbrella with an idle thumb. “Neither do I.”

 

 --

 

After Thomas parted ways with Daisy, he walked brusquely to the back of the house, through the delivery yard and into the kitchens. The downstairs passageways assaulted him with a symphony of banging pots and hurried footfalls that heralded the familiarity of home. Like he was following a glowing thread that undulated through the air, Thomas moved efficiently through the hubbub in search of Jimmy, who had vanished into the bowels of the house like a rushing shade. He ignored the other staff he floated by, and they, for the most part, ignored him in return as the spectral trail Jimmy had left in his wake brought him first to the boot room, where the thread became tangled and stopped.

The room was vacant when Thomas entered, though the case that belonged to Lord Grantham had been laid out on the table in the middle of the room. It had been unhinged, its contents half unpacked and waiting to be tucked away by the proper hands. There was something surreal about the image, a snapshot of a moment that had been abandoned halfway through and left to erode by itself. Thomas felt a strange irreverence as he idly shifted one of the shoe boxes, which had been haphazardly tossed beside the traveling case. It was almost as if he was interacting with some sort of clue Jimmy had left behind just for him, though what it might have meant was anyone's guess.

“You just missed him,” came a thin voice from the far corner of the room.

Thomas looked up, and a warm smile greeted his lips upon finding a departed friend hovering in between interchanging patches of dim sunlight and thick shadow. “I hope it wasn't too much trouble, Lieutenant,” he acknowledged the ghost with a curt bob of his chin. “I appreciate you watchin' out for him while I were gone.”

“Yes, well,” Lieutenant Courtenay's ghost hummed as he drifted towards Thomas, specks of dust swirling through his ethereal form like falling stars as he passed through the afternoon glow. “He's important to you, so he's important to me.”

Thomas had the decency to blush at such a line from the blind lieutenant, who was one of the few individuals Thomas had come across in his aeons of existence that had made a lasting impression. The war had cursed Lieutenant Courtenay with the Sight and the shell shock that came with his cosmic vision, which assailed the poor soldier's mind with an onslaught of forbidden knowledge no sane mortal could bear to see. His glassy eyes beheld ancient prophecies and powerful gods that commanded the universe's chaos; he saw Thomas not as pithy mortals did, but as he _really was_ : his twisted shape and his undulating rage, the depth of his sorrows and all of his glory.

But even with eyes unclouded, Edward Courtenay had been as a soft flame dancing in the void of Thomas's loneliest hours. Thomas could safely say he had come to love Edward and his gentle, steady spirit, and it had consoled the ache in his empty chest to know that perhaps Edward loved him back. Even if all that ever won for Edward was a corroded soul that deteriorated under the weight of such a ghastly gift.

Coming to rest beside Thomas, his translucent form cutting through the contour of Thomas's arm, Edward surveyed the items Jimmy had left on the table and said, “He puts on quite the show until he's alone.”

Thomas glanced at Edward, supposing the dead soldier was referencing the way Jimmy so flagrantly paraded himself through the house, putting on airs like a peacock who was well aware that his beautiful tail was the envy of all those who had to suffer its magnificence. With a quirked eyebrow, Thomas commented sardonically, “Well, I'd hesitate to call Jimmy a creature of subtlety.”

“Even _you_ might be surprised,” Edward replied as he directed his scarred eyes at Thomas, somehow able to look right through him without needing to see him at all. “There is a fine-tuning to even his most obtuse habits. Rather clever, really – hiding in plain view as he does. You'd never think he's holding onto his heart tight enough to crush it to pieces.”

Thomas snorted, almost afraid to believe it. “And this all happened since I've been away?” he asked, clutching his umbrella with dissonance.

Edward's amused chuckle was low and delicate. “Well, it became that much more _obvious_ while you were away,” he told Thomas. Then, with a faint smile, he added, “Or at least whenever you're not quite looking.”

“You don't have to placate me because you think it's best,” Thomas blithely informed Edward. It wasn't that he doubted the lieutenant, really, but Edward was sensitive to the tremors in his Lord Cthulhu's dream cycle, and Thomas often suspected that it was the soldier's own way of trying to mediate the sort of irrational despair that would drive Thomas to end it all. 

“Believe what you like, but I know what I saw,” Edward shrugged, pushing through Thomas's solid form to drift across the length of the room. “Even just now, I watched him come through here and fling that case onto the table with enough frustration to make it pop open.” Edward paused momentarily, like he was analyzing the traitorous rhythm of Thomas's telltale heart, and then queried, “Whatever did you say to him? He was in a proper state while he picked it all up – like he might cry.”  

The very notion of it was ridiculous to Thomas, and he told Edward so: “Jimmy Kent doesn't _cry_ ,” he said plainly.

“Then I suppose Jimmy Kent isn't in love with you, either,” Edward returned with such an even, matter-of-fact tone, the significance of his words was almost washed away. Thomas arrested the ghost with an unconvinced stare, to which Edward merely said, “But maybe even a thousand years couldn't help you see that, if you need a dead, blind man to tell you.”

Canning his instinctive rudeness, Thomas instead ground his teeth as his jaw began to tremble with emotion. Being tied up with Jimmy had always felt more like a torrid love affair trapped behind closed doors, locking away even the gentleness that delineated their relationship from any of Thomas's other encounters, desperate and animalistic as they all had been. Still, he was practical with his answer, and said to Edward, “Well, I doubt he thinks of it quite like that – not the way I do, anyway.”

“What makes you so certain?” Edward pressed serenely. His circle of the room had brought him back to Thomas's side, where he lingered in a stream of afternoon sun that made him fade in and out. But as he spoke, his ghostly tone bore a strong impact: “Can you hear the way his heart quivers every time he speaks about you? Or how many times he's screamed your name into his pillows at night? The things he wishes for when he does? Because I can – I _have_.” Edward took a second to let a private smile pinch his thin lips as he assessed, “How _funny_ it is that you watch him all the time, yet you still never _see_?”

“Sometimes I wish I didn't see so _much_ ,” Thomas said, making a moot effort to pretend that Edward's observations hadn't overwhelmed his every sense. Yet as he considered the various pinpoints of truth that had been cast at his feet, drawing lines between each one, Thomas found himself drowning in every forgotten detail that attracted him to Jimmy at all. Tracing over the dots carved an unnamed pattern into the flesh of his heart – one that was somehow beautiful in its wretchedness. 

“You continue to astound me, Thomas Barrow,” Edward told him with a crooked smile. “Wishing to be blind – that's a new one! Even for _me_.” Another dry laugh escaped Edward, like he found something endearing in such a sentiment: “I can assure you, though, it's certainly not as easy as all that. It opens up a whole other realm of possibilities and... _complications_. Maybe some that have eluded even _you_.”

“I'm still open to suggestions,” Thomas decided glumly, wishing that he could pause the whole world and get off with Jimmy in tow, leaving it behind to rot and fester in its own shit without them. It frustrated Thomas that for all the power that throbbed between his palms, he still couldn't find the words that would eat Jimmy up inside and smother all of his leftover doubts. Rather, it seemed the only thing he excelled at was destruction.

A thoughtful look crossed Edward's angular features, but just as his lips parted to share his advice, the rattle of the door handle being turned interrupted him before he got a chance to go on. The door swung open and Edward nervously fled the room in a wisp of refracted light, while Thomas sent a particularly unpleasant glower at the intruder – who was soon revealed to be none other than Mrs. Patmore.

“Well, it looks like America's a lost enterprise if they managed to withstand an invasion from _you_ , Mr. Barrow” Mrs. Patmore said with a tone that could have been heard as anything from amused to sarcastic. There was a brief pause as the cook and underbutler sized each other up in silence, Thomas with an unimpressed flatness to his gaze, and Mrs. Patmore with a note of suspicious uncertainty. When nothing came of their stand down, Mrs. Patmore finally acquiesced: “Have you seen Daisy?”

Livid that Mrs. Patmore's inconvenient entry had frightened Edward off, Thomas lifted his chin and cast a particularly disdainful look down his cheeks. Though Edward was a favorite of Thomas's, he was much more elusive than William, Lady Sybil, or even Mr. Crawley, who were all just as happy to be around others as they had been in life; Edward, meanwhile, came and went as he pleased, often a quiet observer that had to be coaxed out of lonely corners when there was certain to be no one about. So, making his irritation no secret, Thomas flippantly rejoined, “Do I look like the sort to be keepin' tabs on the likes of _Daisy_?”

After years of dancing around Thomas's prickly disposition, Mrs. Patmore easily sidestepped the baiting comment, and shrugged; “I thought I heard you gettin' a bit _chatty_ from out in the hall, so I s'pose I thought she might be hangin' about with you,” Mrs. Patmore said with casual indifference to Thomas's barbed comment. She threw back one of her own: “Since Daisy seems to be the only girl in the world who can't recognize a lost cause.”

“I think she's a bit sharper on that front than you give her credit for,” Thomas said, his shapely lips curling into a smirk as Mrs. Patmore floundered at his implication. “Besides,” he drawled, tucking his umbrella under his arm like he meant to depart as quickly as possible; “It's not like you'd have to worry about me corruptin' her, turnin' her to me evil, _degenerate_ ways.”

Mrs. Patmore shuddered like she was trying to do battle with a barrage of inappropriate thoughts, which only satisfied Thomas further when he considered what sort of things she was trying to pretend not to know. But she steeled herself with admirable resolve just as Thomas was sidling by her on his way out, and she snatched a handful of his coat as he tried to slip into the hall. “Just don't go confusin' that poor girl. Her head's already stuffed full of clouds as it is,” she warned with a much more unmistakable edge to her voice.

“And yet,” Thomas responded coolly, another contemptuous glower radiating from beneath his heavy eyelids, “she's still a sight more clever than _you_.” He gave his whole arm a violent flick, throwing Mrs. Patmore's grip on his sleeve loose. Much like _Weird Tales_ , which most people scoffed at as ridiculous fancy, Thomas took care to pay attention to Daisy when others did not. Oftentimes, she was the only one with any sense. Contemptuously dusting his coat, Thomas sniffed derisively, “You might try havin' a bit more whimsy about you, Mrs. Patmore. It might _stimulate_ you – y'know, like _clouds_ do _._ ”

Stepping into the hall to take a few sturdy strides after Thomas as he strolled towards the stairs, Mrs. Patmore called after him with unmistakable concern, “Well, just so long as you keep your little partner in crime well away from her....”

With one hand on the railing, Thomas lingered on the first step long enough to let out a bark of laughter. He turned back towards the indignant cook. “You mean _James_?” he asked with an even more devilish quirk to his mouth. “I can assure you that you don't have to worry about your precious Daisy round _him,_ neither.” Then he smartly mounted the stairs and began to climb, shuddering with pleasure at how sensuous it had been to tease with allusions about Jimmy so boldly.

When he reached the attics, he had expected to walk into his room and find his own case abandoned in the same way Jimmy had left Lord Grantham's in the boot room. Instead, his first glimpse of the tiny dormitory he'd come to call _home_ found another scene entirely: Jimmy was still there, dozing on the bed with such natural ease, Thomas forgot to complain that the blond had his muddy shoes kicked up on the duvet. He carefully pushed the door closed behind him, letting it fall on the latch with a decisive _click_ that startled Jimmy awake in a flurry of limbs.

“Thomas,” Jimmy greeted him with a warmth that made Thomas's insides melt. Even just the timbre of Jimmy's voice left Thomas bobbing back and forth on a helpless tide that ebbed and swelled with the blond's every inflection.

“Hello again,” Thomas smiled, his previous annoyance draining out of him as though Jimmy had turned a valve on his mood with his mere presence. “Here to help me unpack?” he asked casually as he hung his umbrella and bowler on the coat rack that occupied the corner nearest to the door. His overcoat and jacket soon followed, his fingers just short of undoing the buttons of his waistcoast as he made a soft, tentative suggestion, “Y'know, the way I asked you to?”

It was adorable how red Jimmy's cheeks would turn whenever Thomas made comments like that, though the innocent quality was often counterbalanced with Thomas's newfound awareness of what dirty ideas Jimmy's blushes often masked. He tried not to seem too eager when Jimmy clambered to his feet and crossed the floor, pulling Thomas into an unprecedented embrace that would have sent Thomas floating away if it hadn't been for the grounding circle of Jimmy's arms. Jimmy pressed an ear against Thomas's chest, where a faint, slow heartbeat whispered to him.

“Gettin' you alone isn't easy to do,” Thomas informed Jimmy as he dared to let his fingers twirl a stray lock of Jimmy's soft hair, which was tickling his chin in a most teasing fashion.

Thomas wasn't certain, for Jimmy's voice was low and muffled against his chest, but he could have sworn he heard Jimmy say, “I'm alone all the time.”

Sliding a curled finger beneath Jimmy's chin, Thomas carefully inclined Jimmy's gaze up. A giddy warmth spun through Thomas, prickling his flesh like an entire galaxy was bathing him in a drizzle of stars. It was like a dream in which he'd finally come alive and been made whole again, and it was all he could do to keep himself from clasping his hands around Jimmy's waist to lift him around in a happy circle. “So we’ll be alone together,” Thomas murmured, transfixed by the stellar blue of Jimmy's irises, where the universe and all its answers seemed to dwell in microcosm. He'd never wanted to kiss Jimmy so badly. “Because whenever I’m with you, I feel like I’m human again.”

“Yeah, but no one can know how I – _we_ feel,” Jimmy started to say as he fumbled clumsy fingers up the linen folds of Thomas’s shirtsleeves. “Forced up to settlin’ instead for late night cups of tea, when it’s hardly what I really want or need or –”

Flashes of the things Jimmy begged of Thomas under the cover of darkness flooded through him, drowning him in an aphrodisiac that overtook his every sense. With inhuman speed, Thomas grabbed Jimmy by the lapels of his tailcoat and swung him around, ensnaring him against the wall between his hands, which he planted firmly on either side of Jimmy’s head. He closed his eyes, reveling again in the lovemaking their souls shared, and then touched his forehead against Jimmy’s, almost as if he wanted to let the beauty of his thoughts transcend between them.

“Or you could just kiss me,” he whispered raggedly as his hands slid down the wall and inwards with the urge to rip the clothes right off Jimmy’s body. A shudder ran through Thomas as he fought to contain the desire, even as he imagined Jimmy’s legs wrapped around his waist, crying with pleasure as Thomas loved him right there against the wall.

Thomas’s lips ghosted over the contour of Jimmy’s nose and around his plump cheeks, his breath pooling between the angular line of Jimmy’s jaw and the cut of his stiff collar; Jimmy whimpered and squirmed as Thomas’s hands impressed themselves against his hips, shoving him back against the plaster. “Let it be night, Thomas,” Jimmy panted desperately, maddened by the heightened intensity of Thomas’s physical touch. “Please, please – _let it be night_.”

“My whole world is night,” Thomas sighed as he found a sign of Jimmy’s longing hardening between his legs. Thomas cupped the blond through his woolen trousers, and Jimmy bit his lip hard enough to draw a pinprick of blood, barely stifling a moan. Thomas thrilled at the heat between them, which burned with a visceral passion that not even the most intimate of their dreams could bring them, and angled his mouth towards Jimmy’s, yearning to finally capture the kiss he’d been waiting aeons to taste. Jimmy clenched Thomas’s shirt, his lips parted to receive the touch, and Thomas pressed the hand between Jimmy’s thighs more ardently as he drew nearer. The steely tones of Thomas’s drab room exploded into dreamy color all around them, drifting with a sensuous slowness that the mantle clock counted out with labored ticking; the belladonna plant that stood beside it glistened, shifting between the deepest pinks and most luxurious purples.

A strong knock interrupted the moment. Just as Thomas was about to claim his prize, Mr. Carson’s distinctive baritone floated in from the hall: “Thomas, have you settled in yet? I’d like a word.”   

Pinned between Thomas and the wall, Jimmy squirmed in terror, even as Thomas called back, “Not just yet, Mr. Carson. I’m – I’m not _decent_.” He paused for a moment, long enough to nuzzle Jimmy affectionately, knowing that, unlike the other male staff, Mr. Carson would never barge into his dorm unannounced – an exclusive protocol that was rooted in the butler’s discomfort with Thomas’s particular _afflictions_. Thomas quested for Jimmy’s mouth, though Jimmy had become reticent, and Mr. Carson grumbled on the other side of the door.

“Well, if you could make it quick,” Mr. Carson was saying tightly, “I could use your help outside at the bazaar.”

“Of course,” Thomas replied, though his focus was arrested by the sheen of Jimmy’s wet lips and the volume of his labored breathing, which rushed around Thomas like the swell of the sinking tide. His job, the bazaar, Mr. Carson – even God, Himself – could wait.

“And another thing,” Mr. Carson continued, clearly not even remotely aware of the debauchery that was separated from him by only the thin paneling of the door; “If you happen upon James, he’s become inconveniently _absent_ from his duties.”

Thomas couldn’t resist drawing back far enough to give Jimmy a mischievous smirk that suggested both trouble and a hint of the playfulness that Thomas usually kept under wraps. “I’ll be sure to give him quite the scolding if I do,” Thomas assured Mr. Carson as he pinned one of Jimmy’s wrists against the wall – an action that only heightened Jimmy’s moral and emotional contradiction.

“See that you do,” Mr. Carson rumbled; “You’re the only one he seems to like taking direction from – terrifying a prospect as that may be.”

The creak of floorboards beneath Mr. Carson’s heavy footfalls signaled his movement away from Thomas’s door, the risk of discovery following at his heels, but the damage was already done. After nearly being caught for the second time since Thomas had returned home, Jimmy’s worst fears managed to suffocate the idea of any sort of immediate happiness with Thomas; he wriggled free of Thomas’s adoring hands and scuttled away along the length of the wall, gasping with the breathlessness of someone who’d just suffered a horrific shock. Thomas tried not to let himself appear too upset, though the droop in his shoulders belied his disappointment. Considering he was a creature that had been born of the deep sea, Thomas found it incredibly ironic that his success in holding Jimmy was about as easy as holding water: Jimmy surged within and without him as a powerful tide that could crush and rend, yet could still soothe with its gentle waves – but forever dripping between even the most tightly folded fingers.

Nevertheless, he couldn’t keep himself from trying time and again, even if it scraped away at his heart a little more each time. He very pointedly shoved his hands into his pockets and said quietly, “I’ll protect you – just as I’ve always done.”

But Jimmy was shaking his head adamantly, his eyes empty and very far away. “You can’t protect me from – from _that_ ,” Jimmy whispered vacantly. Though only his lips moved around his words, it was very clear what Jimmy was referring to, and it was almost worse for Thomas to be brought so close to the sun only to be ripped away. Jimmy then said, “That were the big hint – the hint of the century,” and Thomas’s flesh burned, dripping with sweat and melted wax wings as the sensation of plummeting from a great height surged through him.

Suddenly, even though Jimmy was only a few feet away from him, he seemed incredibly distant, like he was standing in another room entirely; a fatigue overtook Thomas as if he was no longer sure if he was able to keep up with Jimmy as he drifted away from him again. Stuck outside himself, Thomas watched helplessly as Jimmy groped for the doorknob in a mad effort to rescue himself from his invisible demons. The room lurched back to a miserable gray as the door thumped closed in the wake of Jimmy’s hasty exit.

Alone again, Thomas’s palms grew clammy inside his pockets, the glove sheathing his crippled hand becoming unbearably itchy as the cosmic rot festered a little bit more and rustled the very particles that encased his soul. His heart slammed against the inside of his ribs with enough force to bruise, reminding him quite candidly that he was alive – and that it hurt very much to breathe.

 

\-- 

 

The memorized tones of Jimmy’s voice kept Thomas up late into the night. He lay on his back, staring through the ceiling and up into the endless cosmos as he searched for the absolution that would heal Jimmy’s internal anxieties. But even the most secret, ancient stars were unhelpful in divining an answer for Thomas, who felt as though he was still being tossed from side to side in the wild hurricane of Jimmy’s unsettled emotions. He had flown too close to the burning sun on wax wings, and now he’d become caked and mired in their melted residue as he plummeted back to earth. Not for the first time, he wondered if his disillusions were just another facet of his cursed existence, and if Jimmy was just as much an eldritch construct as he was, perhaps left by some ancient enemy to tease him to a final plane of misery and destruction.   

A part of him wanted to throw caution to the wind and slip out of bed to pad stealthily across the hall and into Jimmy’s room, just as he’d done all those years ago. He tried to justify such bold action with reminders that it was different than it had been the other time, back when Jimmy still forgot him and had been too wrapped up in himself to realize how much Thomas loved him. He could still imagine how angelic Jimmy had looked that night, deceptively innocent with his cherubic features – his soft lips and soft hair – and how his long, delicate fingers splayed so gingerly across his belly, which quavered in peaceful, dreamless slumber.

Then Thomas tried to imagine what Jimmy might look like while he slept on _this_ particular night: was he still wrapped in his duvet, resting comfortably? Or was he also lying on his back, awake and listlessly cursing the passageway that stood between them like a rifting chasm. Desperately, Thomas yearned to know, but was afraid to check, and instead just exhausted himself with the endless battle between the two, beaten down by the terrible prospect that he would have to get used to it – again. Sleep touched his heavy eyelids, and consciousness drifted from him until he roused in the sanctuary of dreams.

In the interstellar rendition of his little garret, Thomas became aware of two things straight away. The first was the shift in tone – an erasure of the monochrome skin that grimed the room by daylight and masked its true nature. His favorite constellations twinkled against the sloping ceiling and the mantle clock measured his heartbeat instead of the time; the belladonna plant drank in the moon and glowed radiantly beneath the pinpricks of candlelight that dotted the air, unshackled from their wicks and suspended like tiny stars in a microcosmic universe.

The other thing that was instantly noticeable was Jimmy, who was completely naked and kneeling at the foot of the cot in the space between Thomas’s legs. Watching him with an intensity that made Thomas ache, Jimmy’s eyes glinted more brightly than even the star map overhead. He was still, like a cagey tiger – and just as hungry. Thomas swallowed.

Then Jimmy’s hands were sliding along the length of Thomas’s bare shins, pushing the cuffs of his pajama trousers as they crept upwards. “All I think about is you,” said Jimmy as his hands caught in the striped silk bunching around Thomas’s knees. He shook them free and replaced them atop the fabric shrouding Thomas’s thighs, stretching forward with feline grace as his touch traveled higher still. “And I don’t know what I’m goin’ to do.”

Catching Jimmy’s hands just as they were about to enter dangerous territory, Thomas said, “As usual, your mouth and your motions aren’t in agreement.” He spoke a bit more harshly than he’d intended to, and a small flicker of pain crossed Jimmy’s face, exploding at Thomas with its significance. “What is it?” Thomas pressed more gently, quick to sense that there was something different in Jimmy.

Jimmy’s reply evaded the need for words as his hands forged onward in the shackles of Thomas’s grip, and collided with the underbutler’s hips. In an unprecedented display of forwardness, he shook his wrists free and grasped at the buttons that fastened Thomas’s pajama trousers, clawing at them until they fell free and unveiled Thomas’s burgeoning arousal. Thomas squirmed as Jimmy dropped onto his forearms to bury his nose into dark pubic hair, inhaling Thomas’s cock in one zealous stroke. Hissing in surprise, Thomas instantly knotted the fingers of his rotting hand in a tangle of Jimmy’s blond curls to hold him fast.

“You’re suddenly quite an – an _eager_ boy,” Thomas observed through clenched teeth as he rocked his hips with rhythmic delight. He reveled in the acquiescent hum that vibrated down the length of his erection as Jimmy continued to pleasure him, and found unparalleled eroticism in the sight of Jimmy plump lips wrapped around the head of his cock – the way the blond could barely choke down the size of it when he swallowed the whole length. Jimmy’s compact, godlike frame was twisted around Thomas’s spread legs as Jimmy caressed his own dick, which leapt to attention in his fist with each thrust Thomas made into Jimmy’s hot mouth. Despite its salaciousness, there was something virginal about the gesture – something born out of the frustrations that shone in the daylight. The repetition of Jimmy’s name, reverberating through the empty halls of their imagined domain, melded into a desperate plea of, “James, _James_ – my darling James.”

The flood of Thomas’s love dribbled from the corners of Jimmy’s parted lips, pearling around his chin. He slid back and settled on his knees, watching Thomas with a satiated eye. “I’ve wanted to do that for longer than I care to admit,” said Jimmy as he dabbed at his sticky lips with curious fingertips. “’Cause lately, you’re my fuckin’ _fantasy_.” Then he leaned forward, the crook of his hand just beneath Thomas’s chin as he laid a precious kiss upon Thomas’s mouth, gently prying their lips apart so Jimmy could feed Thomas his own flavor.

But as Jimmy pulled away, there was a shattered hollowness in him that was evident in the way he continued. “And I want you – _need_ you, but….” he mumbled glumly, the onset of his doldrums raining down upon him in a monsoon of ugly sadness; “But me whole world is so caught up in circles and stuck full of wicked little lies, and – I…” He jerked his head in annoyance, like he meant to knock out some traitorous thought. Then with a softened gaze, Jimmy elaborated, “You’re lovely and free and strong and I’m just… not.”

“I’ve had a lot more time to practice,” Thomas told Jimmy very sincerely, his eyelids half closed over moony irises. “I don’t expect anythin’ out of you. Just so long as you stay with me.”

“But I _love_ you, Thomas,” Jimmy blurted with such intensity, it startled both of them. Jimmy’s body drew nearer to Thomas’s, their torsos drawing the same curve against one another as he settled into his admission: “I love you – and I think I always have. Even from that first moment I came in for me interview and I saw you – and you saw me – and it’s like I always _knew_ that it were you who’s meant for me. Which is why – why….”

He flung his arms around Thomas’s neck to fold himself around his dark-haired lover, his confession pressed into Thomas’s long neck amid soft kisses and fluttering eyelashes. “I feel like I’ve come tumbln’ ‘cross the whole universe just to find you again,” Jimmy murmured as his arms tightened their hold, and Thomas carefully began to stroke Jimmy’s bare back with soothing fingertips. Jimmy went on: “I think I might die if they took you from me again. I don’t think I could possibly bear it.”

“We’d find each other again,” Thomas reassured quietly, gently massaging the carved musculature of Jimmy’s back with one hand, the other toying with his blond curls. He kissed Jimmy’s brow, whispering, “Again and again and again.”

At once, Jimmy jerked himself away, grabbing Thomas resolutely by the shoulders as he spoke into his eyes: “Yeah, but the trouble is that this time, I’d _miss_ you. I’m not brave enough to face me life without you.” He cupped Thomas’s face, the pads of his thumbs memorizing the delicate cut of Thomas’s cheekbones, the arch of his nose and the slant of his lips. “So please just – let me be here with you, just a little while longer. Just ‘til I can… understand it as best I can.”

His arm tightening around Jimmy’s waist, Thomas pulled the blond into a fierce embrace, his other hand shifting from the soft tendrils of Jimmy’s hair to trace the contour of an eyelid. The tiny dots of candlelight that drifted through the garret picked out little orange highlights upon Jimmy’s naked body, transfiguring him into a fire-spun constellation that wore a beautiful smile and weary eyes. Thomas understood far too well how terrifying the ugly world could be, and damned the situation that forced them into hiding. Still, even in their cosmic universe, there was a burgeoning love emerging from Jimmy that was unlike anything Thomas had ever known before, which he would have waited lifetime after lifetime to hold.

So, with the most reverent of gestures Thomas turned Jimmy onto his back, settling him into the pinstriped sheets and damask duvet as though he were laying down an angel, and then revered him with a deep kiss, which Jimmy returned with unending passion and ardor.

“I’m in no rush,” Thomas murmured against Jimmy’s mouth; “We have all of eternity.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all three of you who are still reading this! At last you guys get rewarded for holding out this long ;D 
> 
> I'm sorry for the irregular updates, by the way. A lot of really big things are happening to me right now, and sadly, the internet has to take a bit of a backseat. I'm so relieved that some of you haven't totally forgotten this story though! Thanks again for reading!


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Action, horror, and murder most foul on the railway!

 

“I s’pose it _is_ nice,” Daisy said to Mr. Barrow, sitting opposite him in a third-class train compartment. They were on their way back from Brighton, where Mr. Carson had arranged for the staff to take some free time after Lady Rose’s presentation in London. The countryside rushed by with astonishing speed, but Daisy paid it no mind, far too enamored with the small packet of letters in her hand. “But it’s done now, and Ivy’s goin’ to America with him anyway – and _besides_ ,” Daisy went on, shuffling one sheet of paper beneath the other, “I wouldn’t’ve felt right about it if I were still talkin’ to Alfred and all.”

“Why’s that?” Mr. Barrow wondered idly. Unlike Daisy, he was watching the passing landscape with his chin in his hand, though a sleeping Jimmy, exhausted after a day of playing footy on the beach, occupied the bench seat between the underbutler and the window. Jimmy’s prowess had won him the ball as a prize, which he cradled in his lap like a child’s toy, but he had been much too tired to even brag about it. Mr. Barrow had insisted they leave him alone to rest, which Daisy had thought very considerate – and something she would remember to mention the next time someone tried to say that Mr. Barrow wasn’t kind.

“Well, it wouldn’t be very honest, would it?” Daisy said, her cheeks rosy as she surveyed her letters. One was a note from Ethan Slade, the American valet who had spent the duration of his time in London questing after Daisy’s interest, while the others were a pair of unprecedented letters from Alfred, which had both arrived around the same time. Despite the fact that Ethan had been awarded Ivy as a consolation prize, Daisy was still a little flabbergasted by the cascade of male attention that had shifted in her direction so quickly. She still wasn’t completely sure how to handle it, and had even thought of asking Jimmy about the minds of young men – though she supposed Mr. Barrow would have to suffice for the time being.

“Wouldn’t it?” Mr. Barrow seemed very languorously inquisitive, a daze which Daisy supposed could be blamed on too much sun. Mr. Barrow had spent most of the day lounging on a beach chair, squinting at the ocean like it was horrid to look at it in the glaring afternoon light. But then he went on, supplying Daisy with a scrap of adult advice: “You should do as you please – not what you think pleases others.”

“Yes, but,” Daisy furrowed her brow at the first of Alfred’s letters, pausing to reread the missive for what seemed like the hundredth time. “It’s just so curious how Alfred comes off when he writes. I can’t properly work out half of what he’s even tryin’ to say.”

“And that’s different from any other time because…?” Mr. Barrow let wry, a small laugh touching his lips as he spoke. It was hard to tell if his amusement was related to his comment about Alfred, or if it was Jimmy, who was twitching in his sleep like an agitated puppy. With anticipatory speed, Mr. Barrow caught Jimmy’s football just as it was about to roll off his lap and replaced it in the blond’s wanting hands.

Daisy trapped a mouthful of air within puffed cheeks. “I know you think Alfred’s daft –“

“And he is,” Thomas supplied. He flicked his attention away from Jimmy long enough to lampoon Daisy with a quirked eyebrow as he added, “I thought you told him as much when he came back round to visit.”

“Well, I did, but….” The young cook deflated, her shoulders sagging a bit as she sighed. She stared down at her letters again, as if something in the words would help. “But then he started writin’ me out of the blue, and I was so pleased. More than I prob’ly ought to be, considerin’. He talks practically as though we’ve been tradin’ letters for an age, and I can’t quite catch his meanin’. Y’know, what he wants and that.” She said the last bit with a particularly glum edge.   

At this, Mr. Barrow’s glance flicked from the window back to Daisy, a rather dubious look creasing his features. “I’m not sure I’m the best one to ask about this sort of thing,” he cautioned her, though his tone was gentle.

“Why?” Daisy wondered, the curiosity at least enough to put a little snap back into her disposition. She glanced briefly at Jimmy, and then back at Mr. Barrow, internally considering how well he and the young footman seemed to get on, and then said, “You still prob’ly know a sight more about boys than I ever will.”

Daisy hadn’t been making an attempt at humor, but Mr. Barrow seemed to find her remark absolutely hilarious. He laughed so suddenly and richly, it was almost startling. But Daisy smiled, enjoying the ring of it; Mr. Barrow had a good laugh that rolled through him an octave deeper than his speaking voice and made his shoulders shake. It only made Daisy sad that such a phenomenon had to be so rare, certain that no one would believe her if she tried to speak about it. The thought brought her gloomy expression back to the fore, and Mr. Barrow quieted, though he still wore an almost salacious, cat-like grin.

“I should say so,” said Mr. Barrow with that smooth ease he always seemed to possess, though Daisy got the distinct impression that there was a joke she was missing out on. She wondered if it had to do with the fact that Mr. Barrow knew how to _kiss_ boys, too – or at least, that he knew how to kiss Jimmy. However, she decided not to say anything about _that_ , and let Mr. Barrow go on.

“ _Most_ boys usually want just one thing – and it won’t do to be coy about it,” Mr. Barrow warned her, sounding oddly like Mrs. Patmore when he did so – though far more frank in his discussion of the topic than the elderly cook would have ever dared to be. “It’s different for girls, the sort of trouble you can find yourself in if you haven’t got your wits about you.” Then Mr. Barrow became noticeably pensive, turning back towards the window as he muttered, “Not that it’s really anybody’s business what you get up to behind closed doors….”

Jimmy interrupted with a particularly obtrusive snore that caught in his nose for a few seconds before fully depleting. Mr. Barrow was momentarily distracted by the display, softening as he warmly surveyed Jimmy’s tired face.

Daisy, who was not nearly as cognizant of Jimmy’s every little movement, was horrified. “Even Alfred?” she pressed, somehow certain that Mr. Barrow was mistaken.

“Even Alfred,” said Mr. Barrow gravely as he returned his attention to Daisy. Settling back into the bench, he laced his fingers over his stomach and straightened his long legs, ankles crossed beside Daisy’s boots on the other side of the compartment. His eyelids fluttered closed in an ostensible doze as he continued, “If y’ask me, it’s the _good_ ones you ought to look out for most.” A particularly sly grin curled the corners of his shapely lips as another secret thought crossed his mind.

A frown slashed Daisy’s countenance as she considered Mr. Barrow’s comment, finding it terribly mismatched with the languid way the underbutler was relaxing against the bench. “Is _that_ why you never took to Alfred? ‘Cause you thought he were too nice? William, too? And Mr. Bates?” she wondered aloud. “Or – or most anyone, really?”

“William’s alright. I changed me mind about him after that time he punched me in the face. Made me respect him a bit, that little nasty streak,” Mr. Barrow chuckled softly. “Though he never knew that until about 1919.”

It took Daisy a few moments to remember Mr. Barrow’s special gift, and that he must have made peace with William only after he’d died. Part of her supposed that Mr. Barrow was just more comfortable being amicable with ghosts than breathing folk, but then considered the gentle way he was with Jimmy – who could be just as difficult as anyone – and decided that Mr. Barrow was just very discerning. Additionally, she told him with crossed arms and an upturned nose: “I think you’re nicer’n you like to pretend.”

“S’not safe to pretend owt else,” Mr. Barrow said seriously, his tone emphasized by the reopening of his eyes. His dark eyes glinted silver in the low afternoon sun, which drifted through the partially drawn window shade and stamped itself across his pale cheeks. “But go on,” he said with a little toss of his hand, returning to his half-dozing state; “Tell us what young Alfred’s got to say.”

The invitation reassured Daisy, who had started to worry that she’d made a mistake trying to foist her problems onto Mr. Barrow. “I’ll just read it, if that’s alright,” she said, flattening the letters over her lap. Clearing her throat, she kept her focus glued to Alfred’s scratchy handwriting, a little nervous that Mr. Barrow’s face might predict something he wanted to say about it.

_“Dear Daisy,_

_“The Ritz has been a real crack so far, thanks for asking. I wish they took girls; you could cook circles round some of the fellows here, I think. And it’d be nice to have a friend here the way you were my friend at Downton. Not that I haven’t been meeting lots of new people here in London. But none of them are quite you. I see that very well now, if you don’t mind me saying it._

_“Though now that I’ve come to it, I’ll admit that I never thought you’d want to speak to me again after the way I treated you. Proper idiot, weren’t I? You know, I thought it was too good to be true that you’d forgive me after all that with Ivy, but that you’d want to keep in touch as well? I could be the luckiest bloke in the world, maybe. Probably it’d be too much to hope that you’d let me be. So I won’t read too deeply into all those things you said – about how you found something under the moons in your dreams. Quite poetic, you – though I couldn’t say I know much about anything like that anyway. I tried to notice anything special about my dreams, but I usually just see Mrs. Patmore’s kitchen, empty ~~and without y .~~ _ [Daisy stumbled over the scrawled-out text] _None of your dissolving starlight and cloud rivers and that._

_“Though I think if I met the Devil in my dreams, I’d be too afraid to dance with him. But I should’ve figured you’d be braver than me._

_“ ~~Your~~ _ [she squinted at the word as she attempted to sound it out]

_“Best,  
_ _“Alfred N.”_

By the time Daisy reached the end of the letter, her dictation had become so hurried, she was almost indistinguishable. Yet as she lifted her chin to look at Mr. Barrow at last, she was surprised to find that he was watching her with his piercing, dark eyes, a very curious expression etched onto his face. There was a beat or two through which the pair of them hung in an odd silence, which was only made lively by the ribbons of sunlight passing across Mr. Barrow’s face and the snores that continued to vibrate out of Jimmy’s lolling mouth. 

Then, with a bit of slyness about him, Mr. Barrow asked a clarifying question. “And you haven’t written him at all?”

“I hadn’t even thought to,” Daisy insisted, her straw sunhat nearly tumbling off her head as she swung her chin from side to side. “And if I met the Devil in me dreams, it’d be a proper nightmare. I’d sooner scream than dance with the likes of him!”

“You run into the Devil every day, Daisy,” Mr. Barrow said with the particular sort of cleverness that made Daisy feel vastly uninformed.  

“Well, it’s a funny business,” she replied anxiously, not sure she wanted to dwell on the topic – bizarre as it was. “But I thought maybe Jimmy’d know about it. He and Alfred were mates. Sort of.”

About then, Daisy noticed that Mr. Barrow’s eyes were roving across Jimmy yet again, almost as if he was picking apart some secret with just the nuances of his heavy-lidded gaze. His voice a murmur, he said, “I suppose he might.”

“S’pose we’ll have to wait for him to wake up,” Daisy countered slowly, her attention shifting towards the snoring footman.

“The anticipation is right staggerin’,” agreed Mr. Barrow with another smug little curl to his lips, though Daisy – as was typical with Mr. Barrow – got the distinct impression he was talking about something else.

But the smirk quickly vanished when Mr. Barrow took note of Jimmy’s football, which was about to slip free of his lethargic grip once more. He pushed the ball back into Jimmy’s arms, and Jimmy chewed a mouthful of spittle in contentment as he shifted on the bench towards Mr. Barrow. Sinking towards the middle of their shared seat, Jimmy’s head fell against Mr. Barrow’s shoulder almost as if he’d done so consciously. A contented snore motored through his teeth.

To Daisy, the one-sided interaction between Jimmy and Mr. Barrow was strangely haunting. She couldn’t rightly say, but something about the mood had shifted to the sort that clouded the air whenever Mr. Barrow lit midnight candles and spoke to William for her. _Maybe there’s ghosts on board_ , she thought, and then became amused by the idea. _A travelin’ ghost – like a salesman or somethin’!_ She soon lost herself in the imagined life story of her railway haunt, and became vacant as she combed through the details of his hypothetical life – and death.

Daisy was just short of discovering what the name of her conjured ghost friend would be when the door to their compartment suddenly burst open. Daisy and Mr. Barrow both jumped to attention at the surprise of it, though Jimmy only readjusted his position against Mr. Barrow with another ungentlemanly snore.

“Can I help you?” Mr. Barrow asked the man who had thrown the door open, struggling a bit as Jimmy’s sinking weight impressed upon him. He shrugged his shoulders and casually laid his arms across the back of the bench – though Daisy thought it looked more like Mr. Barrow had slung his arm around Jimmy instead.

“Oh,” said the main in the doorway – and only that. He was a tall, narrow man with watery eyes and a hooked nose. His hair was smoothed back over his head, an auburn color that had become lined with silver, giving the impression that age or fatigue – or both – had snuck upon him. At first, he glanced at Jimmy, who was shamelessly spread out over half the bench and sinking further into Mr. Barrow’s personal space. Then his attention suddenly flicked to Mr. Barrow, staring brazenly at him, while Mr. Barrow calmly stared right back. It was almost as if a silent duel was occurring between them. Daisy started to fear that he was one of the sorts of people Mr. Barrow said got _bothered_ by certain friendships. A plucky courage built up in her, her mouth half open in defense of Mr. Barrow.

But the odd visitor saved her the trouble, exonerating himself with a passing fancy. “I was just looking for an empty compartment,” he said hastily, already pulling the door closed like he meant to go. “Apologies for the disturbance.”

Not about to waste her spike in bravery, Daisy made sure he heard her on his way out: “It’s a crowded train. Much good may it do you!” Her words crashed against the closed door, and she sulked back on her side of the little compartment, her arms folded. “What a rude bloke,” Daisy muttered to Mr. Barrow, who was distractedly feathering his fingertips through Jimmy’s hair, almost like he was concerned that something had happened to him.

“Very rude,” Mr. Barrow agreed absently as his gaze traveled to the closed door. The chugging of the engine rumbled through the air, undercut by the low moan of its whistle as they thundered through a railway crossing. The passing village barely flashed outside their window before it became a memory. Mr. Barrow’s fingertips were still toying with Jimmy’s flaxen curls as a frown grew more prominently on his face.

The lack of witty panache made Daisy curious about what was on his mind. She opened her mouth, unable to stop herself from finding out, when Mr. Barrow suddenly held up a hand. “Listen!” he commanded her in a low hiss. “What d’ya hear?”

Concentrating very hard, Daisy did just that. The train’s whistle howled again, melding in with the ever-present din of the locomotive, grinding wheels against the tracks and the clink of carriage couplings. Other than that, there was nothing except their breathing and the thump of their cases as they slid back and forth on the rack overhead. “I don’t hear nothin’,” Daisy finally assessed as Mr. Barrow looked down at Jimmy again, who was still gripped by a death-like sleep.

“Exactly,” said Mr. Barrow, fussing with Jimmy’s hair without much care for who else might burst in on them. Jimmy didn’t stir, which seemed to bother Mr. Barrow immensely.

In fact, Jimmy’s disruptive, musical snoring had been reduced to unsettling quiet since their weird visitation.

“Is somethin’ the matter?” wondered Daisy as Mr. Barrow suddenly shifted Jimmy in the opposite direction, carefully leaning him into the corner between the bench and the window. Then he stood up, wordlessly plucking up his umbrella like he meant to leave, which only made Daisy more anxious. “Really, Mr. Barrow – is somethin’ wrong?”

Instead of giving her a sensible answer, Mr. Barrow put his hand on the door latch and merely said, “Keep an eye on him. I’ll be right back.” Then he disappeared out into the corridor with such speed, he might have vanished in a puff of smoke. The door banged loudly in his wake, bouncing on its hinges before finally settling closed. Jimmy silently slept through the disruption without so much as a twitch.

Pursing her lips, Daisy cocked her head and surveyed Jimmy, trying to understand what it was about him that had suddenly gotten Mr. Barrow in such a tizzy. The blond had become almost disturbingly still, his football caught in a rigor mortis grip. The flush in his skin had paled to such a deathly white, Daisy was almost afraid to check if he was still breathing. _Maybe that’s what got Mr. Barrow so worked up_ , she told herself in a fretful stupor, nervously worrying two large handfuls of her skirt as she stared at the footman.  

Suddenly, Jimmy sat bolt right up on the bench, frightening Daisy enough that she almost screamed. The shock wore off quickly, however – especially when she noticed that Jimmy’s eyes were still closed under the guise of a serene sleep. But his lips were moving around words that only he could hear, like a secret chant that made the very atmosphere arid and hot. An unnatural, dry wind sifted through Jimmy’s hair.

“Jimmy?” Daisy tried tentatively, concerned that Jimmy was having another one of his demonic nightmares. Those seemed to have abated since Mr. Barrow’s return, and it was horribly inconvenient that they should choose to return in the five minutes Mr. Barrow had stepped out. Her instinct was to hop up immediately and seek the underbutler out, but he had so very pointedly told her to look out for Jimmy, she knew he’d be cross if she left the footman alone – especially in such a state. _It’s like he knew somethin’ terrible were goin’ to happen,_ Daisy thought, chewing her lip as Jimmy started to convulse slightly, somehow chilled in the rapidly warming air.   

Then a voice escaped Jimmy’s murmuring lips, though it was abnormal and very unlike his – alien, almost, like screeching insects, if such creatures could speak. Each syllable scraped at her thoughts like they were barbed in fishhooks and shards of glass. Daisy tried plugging her ears, but to no avail.

“They’ll murder you with a suicide,” Jimmy was saying with frightful, inhuman diction, which Daisy somehow managed to understand when the strange words entered her mind. “And you’ll tear the sky full of holes and drown the stars while you extinguish and die.”

Scared, Daisy’s packet of letters fluttered around her like wafting leaves as she lunged across the small compartment and grasped Jimmy by the shoulders. Such morbidity seriously distressed her, and she wished she knew how to soothe Jimmy’s weird sleep-talk without any of Mr. Barrow’s help. _He’ll be right back_ , she told herself resolutely; _He’s always right where he’s s’posed to be…._

Shaking him violently, she tried to soothe him, “I’m fine, Jimmy – see? No one’s dyin’.” She slapped his cheeks with increasing urgency, but his eyes remained dreamily closed, despite the tenseness that coiled through the rest of his frame.

Suddenly, Jimmy clutched Daisy’s elbows, arresting her like he meant to hold her attention. His football bounced from his lap and rolled across the floor, shuttling back and forth by Daisy’s boots as the carriage rocked along the tracks. But even as Jimmy held her fast, Daisy was struck by how dead he looked – an animated corpse with eyes closed in lifeless slumber.

“ _Do I dare disturb the universe_?” he hissed, his capacity for English suddenly returned. He gave her a jerk, and Daisy winced as his fingertips cut into her soft arms. The football bounced up and slammed into her calf with enough weight to leave a round bruise underneath her stocking. Then Jimmy’s eyelids snapped back, revealing glassy eyes that had been obscured beneath a milky pink film. _“In a minute there is time – in a minute there is time –!”_

The image was horrifying, Jimmy’s behavior was that of a marionette on strings – something that already gave Daisy bad dreams on occasion. But it was his blind eyes that did her in, which were now hollow, and gave Daisy the impression that they had been scooped out of their sockets. The train lurched around a bend and its whistle howled again, though even that possessed an unnatural wrongness to it.  

Daisy clawed at Jimmy’s knuckles, using nearly all her strength to loosen his grip. “Don’t you worry,” she assured him with desperation; “I’ll just pop out to find Mr. Barrow – he’ll know what to do.” She slowly began to back towards the compartment’s door, nearly tripping over the rolling football as she did so. “I’ll only be gone a moment so just – just wait right there, Jimmy.” The door handle groaned in protest as she fumbled with it behind her back, desperately trying to depress it enough to retract the latch. “Wait _there_.”

“We’ll drown. We’re all drownin’,” Jimmy replied with a scratchy tone that was akin to grinding teeth. By then, Daisy had managed to wrench the compartment door open and was stepping into the narrow passageway outside; Jimmy called after her with his glassy, thousand-yard stare: “He’ll _drown_!”

Daisy slammed the door closed, realizing that she was short of breath once she was alone. Of all of Jimmy’s weird crashes, this one had to be the worst. She hoped she could find Mr. Barrow quickly enough, somehow sure that Jimmy was going to slip too far for even Mr. Barrow to help. Glancing this way and that, Daisy decided to head towards the rear of the train, unsure that the weird man Mr. Barrow had gone after seemed like the sort to have come wandering in from first class. She nearly tripped over her own feet in her rush.

_It’s better I find him,_ Daisy repeated to herself doggedly, feeling vaguely guilty for leaving Jimmy alone. _He were goin’ to explode whether I stayed there or not!_

At the end of the passage was the doorway that separated Daisy’s carriage from the next. Steeling herself, she opened it, the roar of the whipping countryside pounding her ears as she leapt between the two coupled railway cars. It was easily the most nerve-wracking thing she had ever forced herself to do, and she nearly lost her hat, but fear for Jimmy made her press onwards. The sway of the hurtling train made her fear that she wasn’t going to stick her landing, and for a terrifying moment, as she grasped desperately for the handle on the other carriage, she thought she was going to die. But when she found that she had made it, Daisy felt a renewed sense of self, and was much more confident that she could find Mr. Barrow all on her own.

The distorted train whistle assaulted her as she burst into the next carriage, her skirts blasting forward with the wind that funneled through the door behind her. It swung closed behind her with a loud click, though her dress ballooned around her legs like it was still open – like something was passing by her, _unseen_. She frowned, realizing that the air was hot – similar to the compartment where she’d left Jimmy. Then there was a heavy thump, as if a huge load had been suddenly dropped onto the floor: it plodded on again and again, like footfalls. A twist wrenched her gut, throwing her off balance enough that she had to throw her hand out to catch herself against the nearby wall. The maddening whistle resounded again, and Daisy became very aware of the fact that she was not alone in the corridor. She watched in horror as each bump produced a brief, five-toed impression in the carpet running the length of the carriage. Its shape was round and very much like a paw – and was creeping slowly along.

Almost like it was _hunting_.

Another panic overtook Daisy, suddenly concerned that whatever invisible creature was following her had another purpose. As it passed by her without trouble, she became certain it was stalking someone else – stalking _Mr. Barrow_. Her mission took on a more desperate purpose as she started to run through the carriage, careless of how mad she looked to any other passengers she happened to pass on her way. The sense that she was pushing around something assailed her as she caught up with the measured footfalls and fumbled with the door that separated her from the next carriage. The whistle shrieked at her like the cry of an enraged animal.

Halfway through the following carriage, Daisy heard the familiar tones of Mr. Barrow’s voice – though he sounded incredibly displeased. She slowed, nearing a compartment whose door hung slightly ajar. Mr. Barrow seemed to be caught in some sort of argument.

“Don’t think I’m so stupid that I can’t tell what you are,” came Mr. Barrow’s Mancunian lilt, which was rough with distaste. “Though I get the impression that’s a _mutual understanding_.”

There was a flurry of sound that was just like the odd language Jimmy had been expounding before, and then the voice of the funny man that had intruded upon them: “Our kind’s got no quarrel with you. We stay well away from the sea.”

“There are worse mistakes to make,” Mr. Barrow growled.

Daisy dared to peer around the corner, shocked to find Mr. Barrow pressing his umbrella horizontally against the other man’s neck, pinning him down against one of the benches in the compartment. His back was to her, fortunately – not only so that she might escape his detection, but also because she wasn’t sure she wanted to see what Mr. Barrow looked like when he was in a rage. Though she had witnessed Mr. Barrow’s disdain and his annoyance, she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen him properly _angry_ before. Considering how formidable he could be otherwise, Daisy wasn’t sure she wanted to start.

“What’ve _I_ done?” the man choked out, and Mr. Barrow pressed his umbrella cane more tightly into his throat.

“You thought you’d steal him, didn’t you?” Mr. Barrow accused under his breath; Daisy had to strain to overhear. “Until you realized you’d be stealin’ him from _me_.”

“Well, didn’t start out trying to! I was just trying to hide!” At this, the other man began to laugh, though it was more of a gargle beneath the pressure of Mr. Barrow’s umbrella. “But if he’s _your_ creature, then all the better!” The man began to cough: “A mind like that will be the gem of our library.”

A loud clatter emanated from the compartment as Mr. Barrow thrust his umbrella in such a way that the other man cracked the back of his skull against the top of the bench. Pressing a knee onto the man’s thigh to pin him down, Mr. Barrow growled dangerously, “I don’t find it funny. And soon” – he withdrew the umbrella for a brief second in order to crush it back beneath the other man’s chin with even more weight – “you won’t find it very funny, neither.”   

“Well, it’s too late,” sniffed the other man, though he had great difficulty gasping the words. “The transfer is already underway. You shouldn’t worry too much: we treat our captives _very_ well. And won’t it be nice to have a wise Yith intellect behind that pretty face instead? Much more your equal than some dull human.”

Mr. Barrow barked with laughter, and, even from behind, Daisy could practically envision the look upon his face by just the way he tossed his head and scoffed. “You think _I_ care about _you_? An extinct race whose only accomplishment is sneakin’ round beneath the shadows of time? Hilarious one, aren’t you.”

“We’ve proven again and again that we can escape our fate with what we’ve catalogued from the past _and_ the future,” the man argued, clearly not able to tell that he was fighting a losing battle. “Unlike _you_ , who just wants to see the world _burn_.”

“And when it does,” Mr. Barrow sneered testily, “what will all your precious knowledge do for you then, hm?”

Daisy had no idea what a _Yith_ was, or any of the grim business they were talking about, ominous as it all seemed, but it hardly mattered. She could only think of Jimmy and the importance of telling Mr. Barrow to get back – especially since Mr. Barrow might not have any idea that the terrible thing the queer man was threatening Jimmy with wasn’t some kind of desperate lie. She bit down on a huge breath; her skirts ruffled and a grating whistle whispered down the corridor. The train flew into a tunnel, casting the carriage in darkness, and she froze.

With the garish sun a mere pinprick of light in the distance, the veil of darkness revealed the monster that had been travelling with her, unseen. It was a huge, polypus creature that barely touched the ground with its spindly, tendril-like legs as it swam through the air with that horrific, alien whistle. Its breathing was a boiling wind that disturbed the folds of her clothing and the wisps of her hair, causing beads of sweat to dot her nose as it twisted nearer to her. Its pustuled body was ripped with dozens of gasping, fanged mouths. The very stink of it caused Daisy to avert her face, squinting her eyes shut as it slithered around her, twisting towards the compartment where Mr. Barrow was still busy choking the Yith man with the length of his umbrella.

The light fixture inside the compartment flickered its electric glow across the creature, rendering it invisible once more. The compartment door creaked on its hinges as the monster nosed the gap between latch and jamb wider. Daisy forced herself to look, worried Mr. Barrow might be too distracted to notice. As the alien beast loomed up behind Mr. Barrow, the Yith man squeaked and grew pale; Daisy bent around the corner, shouting a desperate, “Mr. Barrow!”

Mr. Barrow glanced over his shoulder just in time to see a pale glimmer of the invisible creature delineate itself in the unsteady electricity. His distraction proved unfortunate, however, as the Yith man managed to worm himself free of the chokehold of Mr. Barrow’s umbrella. The polyp vanished again, and Mr. Barrow shot Daisy a hard glare as the Yith man started crawling towards the doorway, which Daisy was currently obstructing.

“Well, don’t just stand there!” he snapped, clearly too hard-pressed to be irritated with her. He’d spun on his heel, attempting to stride after the escaping Yith, but the colorless monster seemed to have similar intentions. Mr. Barrow, however, seemed unwilling to relinquish the satisfaction of punishing the Yith for what he’d done to Jimmy, and angrily lunged after the invisible polyp with an accuracy that Daisy couldn’t rightly fathom. He brandished his umbrella like a weapon.

It was strange to see Mr. Barrow looking so unkempt as he swung his umbrella at the unseen beast, his usually slick hair falling loosely over his brow. Another angry whistle blasted through the compartment as Mr. Barrow jabbed the pointed end of his umbrella downward, stabbing it through a section of air that masked stinking flesh. A geyser of black blood spurted up around Mr. Barrow’s umbrella, marking the contour of the monster, even as it hid in plain light.

By then, the train had surged out of the tunnel and was trundling along sunlit tracks once more. Able to detect the monster as Daisy could not, Mr. Barrow yanked his umbrella out of the polyp by placing his brogue right next to the hole he’d bored into its cylindrical body, which triggered another animalistic whistle and an even more visceral fount of brackish blood to spurt upwards. It sprayed Mr. Barrow’s face, and he grimaced like dirtying his dapper appearance was the worst offence the creature could have made. He stabbed it again, and this time dragged the point of his umbrella through the flesh to open up a bubbling, oozing gash that made the very atmosphere look as though it was bleeding.

Meanwhile, the Yith man had been trying to crawl around Daisy, and had grabbed her ankle in an effort to hold her still as he scuttled out into the corridor. Unsure what else to do, Daisy reacted on instinct, swinging back her unfettered foot to smash her boot squarely into the Yith’s face. She kicked him two more times for good measure, and he rolled aside, groaning in pain. The whistling beast glimmered suddenly, its dripping mouths gasping all at once – almost as though it had been given a second wind once the Yith man had fallen. A harsh screech pierced the air as it rushed towards the Yith, while Mr. Barrow fumbled with his umbrella like he meant to unclasp it.  

Dread filled Daisy, and she stepped back into the corridor, dragging the door closed so that she wouldn’t have to witness the Yith man’s fate. She leaned heavily on the door, pretending like she couldn’t hear the supersonic thump that made the frosted glass window shudder in its wooden frame behind her. A pair of women were leaning out of the neighboring compartment, staring at Daisy like she owed them an explanation for the odd sounds filling the carriage. “Disagreement over the fare,” Daisy told them in a small voice; “Came to blows, it did.”

The women not only seemed to accept this explanation, but both nodded at each other with a mutual desire for gossip.  

“Which one’s winning, would you say?” the shorter woman asked.

Another loud sound erupted behind her, and Daisy chanced a quick look over her shoulder: Mr. Barrow’s unmistakable black shape faded and blurred as the invisible creature passed between him and the cloudy glass. She could just hear his smug intonation as he growled at it, “I’ll thank you to keep out of the _way_.” The creature’s whistling response was weak and wheezing, like it was in grievous pain. 

“Are you sure it’s really over the _fare_?” the taller woman wanted to know as she gave Daisy an appraising look that Daisy thought was ridiculous.

“’C-Course it was!” Daisy insisted, stiffening against the door like her paltry weight would be enough to keep the battle on the other side locked tight. Her lungs gasped as if they’d been crudely stitched together with an ugly needle, but she kept her face brave for Mr. Barrow’s sake. “Me friend paid the way for the lot of us – but the other bloke’s arguin’ that it were _him_ who spent the money on our third friend, a-and that he’s owed the sum.”

“So they _are_ arguing over you!” the taller woman clapped her hands victoriously.

“N-No!” Daisy stammered, realizing she was talking herself into a corner. She tried to think of what Mr. Barrow or Jimmy would do: both of them could lie to the King without a blink or an ounce of regret. “It’s _another_ friend – a lad! He’s a lad!”

“Ohh,” hummed the shorter woman slyly; “And where’s _he_ hiding, hm?” She seemed determined to sniff out her imagined love triangle.

“I’m sorry, m’Lord. I’m _sorry_!” came the shrill cry of the Yith man from inside the compartment. The door shattered against Daisy’s back as his weight was thrown against it and then ripped away. “I was just trying to protect my brethren – you should know why! I meant no offense or harm! Please, mercy!”

Again, Daisy dared to catch a glimpse of what she could through the frosted glass, and was just in time to see Mr. Barrow yank the Yith man’s trembling form away from the door, flinging him against one of the facing benches inside the compartment. Mr. Barrow seemed to have discarded his umbrella and his jacket, the leather of his braces standing out against his rumpled shirt as he lunged towards the Yith man, hissing, “Too late for words. I will _never_ stop hunting your kind for this. While I still sleep, when I wake – _never_. And the universe is nowhere near large enough for you to hide.”

Then another crash resounded and something akin to the splintering of wood or bone could be heard faintly beneath a much more unpleasant squelching. A weird, gargling sound came from within the compartment, muffled by the door, and then, nothing.

The two women were still waiting in the passageway, rapt with attention. They both seemed aware that the dispute had been settled and that the victor would soon emerge. Daisy felt the door handle twist against her elbow, and she slid out of the way to allow Mr. Barrow room to exit. He stepped into the corridor as casually as one might be if he were making his way to tea, his coat draped over one arm as he shook out his unclasped umbrella – which spat a few thick, grimy droplets across the floor from between its folds. He had wiped the alien ooze from his ashen cheeks with a handkerchief monogrammed with a very large J, and then primly rearranged his coiffure, which seemed to remain slick without the need for oil.

“Best leave him to have one last think over his fatal mistake,” Mr. Barrow said to Daisy as he pulled the compartment door closed behind him. “Though you’ll have to explain why you so petulantly did the exact opposite of what I asked you to.”

Daisy cast a look at the two female spectators, somehow made more nervous by them than anything about Mr. Barrow. It was a funny thing, considering that they were just a pair of tittering maids, bored while en route to _wherever_ , and that Mr. Barrow had just somehow managed to subdue some monstrous ghost creature. But then again, Daisy knew Mr. Barrow wasn’t like other men.   

“It’s Jimmy,” Daisy said, quickly forgetting all the madness that had just danced with laughing madness all around her. “He’s in a state – he needs… he needs _you_.”

Casting a quick look at the two women, Mr. Barrow placed a protective hand between Daisy’s shoulder blades and pushed her passed them. He gave them a courteous nod as he walked by, but something about the way he said, “You might give him a bit of space,” sent them scurrying back into the safety of their own compartment. As if to frighten away any inklings of curiosity, he added derisively, “He’s not fit for ladies’ eyes.”

As they moved on, the dark chuckle that followed such a comment was heard only by Daisy, who could only wonder at its intention as they continued back towards their original carriage. “What happened?” Daisy begged to know once she was sure the women weren’t eavesdropping anymore. They had reached the end of the carriage, and Mr. Barrow was holding the door for her so that she might make the leap back to the next car, which seemed much less scary with his supervision. Mr. Barrow quickly jumped after her, moving so easily, he barely had to throw his arms out for balance. Daisy half expected him to land in a shadow and transform into a black cat, so graceful was he.

“That man was a shell. His real mind was locked in an ancient library that existed aeons ago and replaced with the consciousness of another – one of an ancient alien race called the Yith,” Mr. Barrow explained once they were safely walking through the next carriage. “They’ve survived the destruction of hundreds of worlds by projecting their minds across time in such a way – learning what they can from past and future.” Mr. Barrow sneered, clearly disgusted by such an underhanded tactic: “Scum.”

“But what about that flyin’ polyp thing?” Daisy asked, sure there was more to it. “I swore it were followin’ me when I went to fetch you.”

“Which is why you should have stayed right where I told you to,” Mr. Barrow rejoined unsympathetically. “It was after the Yith. They’ve been enemies since they both found this planet.” Another sharp laugh sliced between Mr. Barrow’s red lips, like the idea of such enmity was hilarious to him. “Luckily, that were just a small one, and they eventually just fall to dust – and I… well….” As he trailed off, another wry chuckle danced across his lips as he shook his umbrella once more, and then drew a cursory sweep down the length of both shirtsleeves with the back of his hand, like he had suddenly caught sight of some stray smudge on the linen.

Daisy pondered over the things Mr. Barrow had said, especially when they reached the end of the carriage and needed to focus on making the leap back to their own. Once they were both safely inside, Daisy had formulated her question: “So it was the Yith that were tryin’ to hurt Jimmy? Because it wanted his mind?”

“Yes,” Mr. Barrow said grimly, silent on any more about the topic even when Daisy cast him a curious look.

In silence, they continued on to the compartment where they’d left Jimmy. Mr. Barrow threw the door open with the urgency of someone who was certain a few seconds might make the difference in a life, and hurried into the tiny room. Daisy crept in after him, quietly latching the door behind her as she lingered behind to watch. Something told her that interrupting Mr. Barrow just then would be just as detrimental for her as it might be for Jimmy.

Jimmy was slouched on the far corner of the bench, unbothered by the patter of his skull against the window with the rumble of the train. His eyes were still empty, and he stared at nothing even as Mr. Barrow sat down beside him and carefully gathered him into his arms like he might have been holding something precious. Jimmy slumped against Mr. Barrow’s chest with the limpness of a rag doll, and Mr. Barrow tucked him beneath his chin, rocking him like a child. “It’s alright,” he murmured into Jimmy’s yellow hair; “Just come back to me, my darling.”

Mr. Barrow was breathtakingly gentle with Jimmy, who shuddered with blind comfort despite being as unaware of his surroundings as ever. The soft way Mr. Barrow spoke to Jimmy almost made Daisy feel like she was being intrusive. She went to sit on the other bench, staring out the window on pretext, but unable to keep Mr. Barrow and Jimmy very far from her mind. Everyone else always thought they were so _nasty_ , and yet, reflected in the glass, she could see evidence that the opposite was true.

_It’s got to be ‘cause Mr. Barrow says some people would think their friendship is wrong that they behave like that_ , Daisy thought as she spied on the pair, unsure what could possibly be so problematic about two people who cared for each other as much as Mr. Barrow and Jimmy did. In doing so, it made her realize how much she wished she and Alfred had shared something similar, and then wondered if she’d ruined the prospect of that for good with her hardheadedness.

“Tell me what year it is,” Mr. Barrow asked Jimmy, mindless of Daisy as he cupped Jimmy’s chin and held his focus with his own. “What year is it, and where are you, love?”

“The hall of books,” Jimmy answered slowly, speaking as though he had only just remembered how to. Then he started, becoming so agitated, Mr. Barrow had to grasp his shoulders to help him settle down. “I thought I’d never leave – never, never,” Jimmy cried urgently, though it was hard to tell how aware he was of Mr. Barrow’s presence. “They said I’d be happy there with so much to read, but I’d read it all before, and I knew – I _knew_ …!”

“Shh, shh. I’ve got you,” Mr. Barrow patiently soothed Jimmy. He made a fuss over Jimmy’s disheveled clothing, straightening his loose tie and smoothing his crooked lapels. “Come on, now,” he said, replacing his hands on Jimmy’s face so that their gazes were entwined; “Who am I?”

Jimmy blinked at Mr. Barrow, though it took him far less time to consider his answer: “Thomas,” he said with confidence. The articulation of the name seemed to inspire the blossoming of a smile, which spread across Jimmy’s face as he elaborated, “Thomas, who I wrote me feelin’s for on a piece of paper, and signed it ‘ _Daisy’_.” He let a tiny, mad chuckle rock his shoulders briefly as he lifted a stiff index finger to his lips, telling Thomas in no uncertain terms, “Because it’s a _secret_.”

Taken aback momentarily, Mr. Barrow let out an amused laugh of his own – and Daisy amazed at how often Jimmy was able to call mirth out of him. “That’s right, _Thomas_ , who you wrote your feelin’s for,” he smirked, almost as if he’d stumbled upon an unexpected victory. “Which I’m sure you’ll share with me, yeah?”

“I hid it in the post,” said Jimmy, who still didn’t seem quite aware of what he was saying just yet. But he kept his focus on Mr. Barrow, like he was the only person in the world he could see. Something suddenly came to him, and he squirmed beneath Mr. Barrow’s hands, fretting, “But I can’t hide _me_. They’re comin’ after me dreams, Thomas – they’re… they’re….”

“ _No_ ,” Mr. Barrow said emphatically, a tense frown creasing his shapely mouth. “Planets will rain down in flames before that. I’ll see to it.”     

Another sort of wind seemed to rustle through the compartment, like a breath of fresh air to inflate Jimmy’s stale lungs. The familiar steel blue of his irises floated up from beneath the glassy blankness that had coated them, shining so brightly that even Daisy could see the change from across the way. Mr. Barrow sighed with relief, though he only very chastely let his hands run down the length of Jimmy’s arms to catch his hands in his lap.

The return of Jimmy’s cognition was short-lived, however, because the first thing he said to Mr. Barrow was, “I saw you die.”

Horror crossed Mr. Barrow’s features, like he’d been slashed through the belly with a knife that twisted cruelly in his gut. “It’s a filthy lie,” he told Jimmy with a hint of anger. “A lie to frighten you into their thrall – it won’t _happen_.”

Jimmy seemed equally hurt that he’d said something to offend Mr. Barrow. He hung his head and mumbled, “But it just seemed so… real.”

Jimmy’s distress was enough to melt Mr. Barrow’s displeasure, and the underbutler folded Jimmy into a rather personal embrace, bending Jimmy’s head against his own should so that he might press his cheek into Jimmy’s curling hair. “This is real, my darling,” he murmured quietly. “ _This_ is.”

Muttering something Daisy couldn’t hear, Jimmy smiled against Mr. Barrow’s shirtsleeve, careless of the black smudge that adhered to his nose when he did so.

 

\--

 

With their seaside adventure behind them, things returned to their usual busyness once the staff returned to Downton. Even after just one day back at work, the beach had become a distant memory that felt like it had been ages and ages ago whenever Daisy thought about it. Even the great mystery of Alfred’s unsolicited letters – which she _still_ hadn’t had a chance to ask Jimmy for his opinion about – had been pushed to the back of her mind as the dietary needs of the Crawley family once again became the only thing of importance in Daisy’s schedule. She supposed that was what happened when one took a holiday: it just made work seem that much harder – and _worse_ – when one returned to it.

It was with great relief that first afternoon tea rolled around. Daisy collapsed on a chair at the servants’ hall table, kicking her worn boots up onto its rung so she could take the weight off her aching feet. Jimmy was at the piano, livening the room with the Charleston, while Mr. Barrow sat in his rocking chair throne, reading the paper.

“Anythin’ interestin’ today?” asked Daisy as Mr. Barrow flipped the folded newspaper over to read the other half. Daisy strained her neck trying to catch a glimpse of the side Mr. Barrow had just finished with.

“Nope,” said Mr. Barrow blandly, a column of cigarette smoke wafting up from behind the paper.

Which was a curious thing for anyone to say considering the headline, which Daisy had just managed to make out upside down. _Massacre on Yorkshire Railway_ was printed above a rather gruesome image of an old man that had been stabbed so many times through the stomach, he seemed to have been disemboweled. He lay in an ink black pool of blood that coated a rather familiar train compartment. Daisy narrowed her eyes and glanced up at Mr. Barrow, and then over at Jimmy, who seemed very pleased that Mrs. Hughes had just stopped long enough to compliment his piano-playing.

Her gaze darted back to Mr. Barrow, and he somehow seemed to catch her eyes upon him through the barrier of the paper. “Just another ordinary day,” he said, and flicked the paper over to the next page. “My, my.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this story has become so staggered in posting. My life is a little bit on fire right now! But I hope you guys still enjoy the pieces as I manage to get them together. Thanks so much for reading, if you are! I hope it's not tooooo weird! 
> 
> By the way, the story of the Yith and the so-called "flying polyps," which were mentioned in this chapter, can be found out about in more detail in Lovecraft's story, 'The Shadow Out of Time.' I feel as though I've been neglecting these sorts of references. Feel free to ask about anything I might have forgotten to cite! 
> 
> Also, Jimmy is spouting some more TS Eliot in there. The Lovesong of Alfred J Prufrock, just as Thomas did... in another dream -- way back ;D


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An upstairs dinner conversation gets a bit personal.

 

In many ways, Thomas’s return was more difficult for Jimmy to manage than the secret understanding of his feelings that had developed in the underbutler’s absence. Inner desires could be easily tucked under midnight clouds, out of sight and mind, but with Thomas back at Downton, the breath of the morning greeted Jimmy with temptations of another sort – a sort that was much more difficult to pretend about when the passions he shared with Thomas in dreams touched the passions he spent most of the daylight hours trying to subdue. He found the effort almost impossible, when all he wanted to do was fade into Thomas every time he saw him – like darkness into the night.

Bad enough were the moments he caught himself watching Thomas, which had become far more focused than they had ever been in the past. He wondered if Thomas knew how entrancing he was to Jimmy, who was quickly discovering that his affection for Thomas wasn’t anything _new_ , but rather something he had only suppressed with a weird breed of social abstinence. Completely squashing his anxiety about it was something he knew would take an impossible amount of time, but there was a certain air of relief that filled him in place of dread whenever he and Thomas were together. Even when he suspected some of the others – usually Anna and Baxter – had a slight inkling that he and Thomas had become closer as of late, it was easier for him to meet it with a cheeky laugh instead of the panic he used to throw at O’Brien in the old days.

Still, he felt as though he was constantly standing on the edge of a precipice he couldn’t quite discern. That particular impression became clear in the odd moments that filtered between others – moments that only ever seemed perceptible to Jimmy and Thomas himself. Usually it was a little slip of something odd, like the shimmer of a ghost as he passed through a room, the slithering contortions of Thomas’s shadow as it crawled at his heels, or any number of other details that confused Jimmy’s sense of reality. One evening, while wasting time in the delivery yard after dinner, Jimmy had sat with Thomas and watched him burn a cigarette of starshine, while expelling galaxial clouds of smoke around their heads, leaving Jimmy unsure if he’d fallen asleep on his feet somewhere, so ethereal was the image.

Jimmy did his best not to think about such things when he could help it, though the effort almost made it worse. Serving meals was a prime example, stuck pretending like he couldn’t see Thomas standing across the dining room from him – stuck pretending like Thomas was just as invisible as all the other strange, _beautiful_ things around him that no one else could see. It was almost as torturous as the feeling that Thomas was just as blind to him, standing opposite Jimmy with the wine decanter like a statue whose rouged lips and cheeks were the only signs of life to him.

Thomas’s reflection, however, usually had other ideas. Jimmy had quickly learned that even when Thomas and his mirrored self were in the same room, his reflection still kept a mind of his own. He usually liked to sit in the large mirror behind Thomas’s usual place in the dining room, making lascivious faces at Jimmy throughout. It was almost more sensual to see Thomas at work – the model of British service – while his reflection gave Jimmy sharp reminders of the sort of things they got up to in dreams. It was with great difficulty that Jimmy would stand at attention, while attempting to ignore the way Thomas’s reflection liked to suck on his fingers like he was between Jimmy’s thighs and hungry for a taste. The display assailed Jimmy with black desires to have Thomas in every unholy, forbidden way the daylight frowned upon.  

“ _Dessert_ , James,” Mr. Carson hissed at Jimmy during just such an interlude. Jimmy leapt double time to the servery to fetch the spotted dick that had been set aside there.

“Is everythin’ alright?” asked Thomas, meeting Jimmy in the privacy of the little pantry. He had been acting in Alfred’s stead until they rustled up a new footman to replace him. He reached around Jimmy’s torso to pick up the saucier filled with custard from the prep counter behind him.

“What’s alright?” Jimmy breathed, holding the large silver tray of pudding.

“You,” murmured Thomas, who was emboldened by the privacy found in the oft forgotten room between the kitchen and the table. “You seem particularly dazed today.”

He leaned in close enough for the belladonna aroma that wafted around him to fill Jimmy’s space. The scent was noxious as Jimmy breathed deep and closed his eyes, afraid to overwhelm himself with all the things about Thomas that made him weak. He knew that Thomas wanted desperately to hold him and kiss him unhindered by the shade of moonlight, and would take any private moment between them to try.  

“Let’s have just a little one,” Thomas murmured softly, somehow able to gracefully balance the saucier without so much as a misplaced splatter of custard as he pressed his cheek against Jimmy’s temple. The touch of his flesh cindered through Jimmy’s skin and lit his very soul on fire. “You’re cheatin’ yourself, livin’ only when you aren’t,” he murmured against the shell of Jimmy’s ear, disturbing his neatly-combed blond hair. “Ask me how I know.”

“It’s their conversation,” Jimmy grumbled quickly, finding it a more than decent excuse – even though Thomas was correct in his summation. “It’s makin’ me nauseous.”

Thomas drew away, a frown fixed on his pretty features. “Well, I s’pose I don’t blame you,” he said soberly, his expression oddly devoid of interest. “It’s not every day a duke loses his fortune _and_ gets caught in sordid scandal all at once.”

“Don’t mind hearin’ about some rich slob goin’ broke – they can chat about that all day if they like,” said Jimmy, who had become very certain that the silver handle resting on his palm needed a little buffing with his gloved thumb. “It’s the other thing what gets me….”  

It was hard to know if Thomas was going to say anything in response, for it was in those next two seconds that Mr. Carson leaned into the servery to ask urgently, “Is there some sort of _trouble_ with the food?”

Both Thomas and Jimmy hopped to it quickly, marching back out into the dining room with the measured quickstep of two little windup soldiers. Jimmy hurried to Lady Violet’s seat and bent in with the pudding long enough for her to serve herself, and then moved on to Lord Grantham, who sat beside her. As he leaned with the dessert tray for the earl, so, too, did Thomas with the saucier for the dowager countess. Though it was expected for footmen to wait on the diners in such unison, there was a natural sync that Jimmy had with Thomas – one which he had never found even when working with the most experienced of servants. It gave Jimmy a certain jolt, like he had trodden on an enormous moment impossibly squeezed into a tiny gesture that bent at the waist.

Conversation around the table continued regardless of Thomas or Jimmy, who were only seen to be as good as the gloved hands beneath the silverware. Lady Violet, always ready to have a chuckle over social indecency, was happy to lead the topic at hand, even as the other diners started to grow a bit weary of her enthusiasm for the misfortune of others. For once in his life, Jimmy rather wished she wouldn’t, as each furthered detail only served to dig up old and practiced fears.

“But who would have believed it,” Lady Violet was pressing, clearly delighting in the embarrassment of someone she didn’t seem to think well of in the first place. “Married to a lovely baronetess only to squander it on such un _seemly_ life choices.”

“Really, Mama, is this something we _must_ discuss all evening?” sighed Lord Grantham, clearly at his threshold of exasperation. He was far more of the school that if something was ignored, then it would go away.

“Oh, but I rather do think we should, my dear,” retorted Lady Violet with her trademarked breed of feigned indignation. She reached for her wine goblet and took a particularly victorious sip before adding, “I mean, just _imagine_ if that man had been married to our Mary.” She took another sly sip of wine, adding in a lower tone, “As he came so very close to doing, if you’ll recall.”

Lady Mary sat at the far end of the table, rolling her eyes so far back into her head, Jimmy was pretty sure they were going to stick there. He tried to focus on the absurdity of _that_ , which was far more palatable to him than the absurdity that was unable to vacate the rest of the dinner conversation – despite the fact that _absurd_ was probably a far less fitting term than was _terrifying_.

“It wouldn’t have bothered me,” Lady Mary sighed with obvious boredom. “In a marriage fixed out of convenience, I rather think we’d’ve made some sort of arrangement out of it that behooved all those involved.”

Lady Cora was noticeably silent on the topic, while Lady Edith took up the role of indignant aristocrat. “You only say that now after you’ve had five minutes to stick it with someone you had the luxury of saying no to,” Lady Edith huffed, clearly still rankled with annoyance that Lady Mary never seemed to appreciate the sea of fortune and opportunity that was so often strewn at her feet. “I bet it’d be a fully different affair if you’d found out the lovely duke you were tied to spent more time with – with _footmen_ in his bed than you!”

This wasn’t the first time this particular detail about the duke in question had come up in conversation that night, but every time it did, Jimmy felt his stomach knot itself into impossible shapes that squeezed the bile up his esophagus. The very idea of it scared him far more than even the idea that his lover was a fabulous god of dreams and mayhem: no, what repeatedly sent chills down the length of Jimmy’s back was the very clear knowledge that no matter who you were in this world, even the right kiss at the wrong moment could destroy a life beyond repair. Not for the first time, Jimmy found himself too edgy to imagine a life in chains and without Thomas instead of a carefully plotted one that kept them together – even if it meant safely locking their affections behind a filigree of nighttime constellations.

“Maybe I’d’ve liked a footman or two in my bed as well,” Lady Mary sneered across the table. She snatched up her own glass to hide the unladylike shape to her lips, muttering, “Really, Edith, must everything you think be so unbelievably tedious?”

“ _Mary!_ Please! _”_ Lord Grantham fumed at his daughter, who remained indifferent. “It’s already enough I found the Duke of Crowborough despicable in the first place. I don’t need it to be furthered by this added impoliteness about how he’s undone himself with his wholly inappropriate tastes. For God’s sake.” Lord Grantham, in a rare show of irritation, began to rub his temples. “And you treat it like it’s a joke that the poor woman currently being dragged through the gossip pages could have so easily been you!”

“I’m trying to decide if that’s a compliment or not, since it wouldn’t be my first trip,” Lady Mary huffed, turning her nose up. The angle of her face brought her in line with Thomas, who had just reached her chair with the saucier. As he presented it to her, Jimmy couldn’t help but glare across the top of Lady Edith’s head, frowning as Lady Mary took it upon herself to ask Thomas a most unprecedented question. “I know it’s been some time, Barrow, but you remember the Duke of Crowborough, do you not?” she asked with a little smirk. “Didn’t you valet for him when he came knocking for a bride?”

Jimmy was probably the only person in the world who noticed that Thomas became a few shades paler at the question. Anxiously checking the mirror for a clue, Jimmy found even Thomas’s reflection strangely arrested by the exchange. Jimmy wasn’t sure what the significance of the question was, but when he started to paste it together with Thomas’s involvement, he was left with a result that didn’t do much to console him. If anything, there was a roiling in his stomach that was quickly twinging itself an envious green – and that was only his initial gut instinct. It got worse as the discussion dragged Thomas down with it.

“I do, m’Lady,” Thomas said genially as he pulled the saucier away from her and moved on to serve Lady Edith.

“And how much of a gentleman would you say he was back then, hm?” Lady Mary asked, not making a very strong attempt to veil the true meaning of her question – and why she’d chosen Thomas as its recipient.

“I’d served him a few times before in other situations,” said Thomas, who was speaking in that careful candor he saved for upstairs conversation. “He was – quite generous with me.” Here, Thomas masked a pause in diction with a rather sticky cough, and then flattened his red lips stiffly together.

“Oh, good God, Mary, did we really need to bring the problem even closer to home? The first reminder was more than enough,” Lord Grantham groaned much more loudly, clearly uncomfortable with the idea that if the Duke of Crowborough had managed to bed his daughter, there would have been at least one footman below stairs receiving the same holy benefits. “I’m sorry, Barrow,” he said pressing an irritated hand towards the table like he wanted to bang it, but in the last minute, found himself more dedicated to the bone china than his annoyance; “I’m sure you don’t need a reminder of things better left unsaid.”

Which was the proper, aristocratic way of stamping a subject as unyieldingly taboo. Though Jimmy was unsure whether it was a particular memory or Thomas’s _tastes_ that needed forgetting.

Lady Mary, meanwhile, seemed ignorant of her father’s intolerance, and continued to drill Thomas with questions that were mindless of Thomas’s personal level of comfort. “Barrow – since I shall assume you know a bit more about this than the rest – would you happen to know if the young Duke was particularly athletic? Perhaps a cricketer, like yourself?” Somewhere through her question, her eyes had shifted across the table to bore a very direct hole through her father’s neck.

“Oh, Mary, I don’t know why you insist on being so petulant,” complained Lady Edith, whose vexation was one that Jimmy found a startling amount of empathy for. “I can’t see why you think any of this even _matters_ anymore. Though I suppose if anyone was going to take glee in someone’s terrible misfortune, it would most certainly be you.”

“Well, _I_ was just wondering if Papa perhaps used cricket as some stick of measure in regards to how tolerant he is for disgusting scandal,” Lady Mary said, ignoring Lady Edith with a smile that could only be described as sinisterly pleased. “As he seemed to use such a standard when it came to old Barrow there – and it seems they bat for the same _team_ – it must have been enough to let Papa turn a blind eye if it meant sacrificing his daughter to a duke.”

Lady Edith made a snide remark that no one credited – except for possibly Thomas, who cast a heavy stare at her from the side: “Don’t behave as if you weren’t _desperate_ for him,” she accused with a rankled frown.

Lady Cora closed her eyes and tilted her head up at the chandelier overhead. She looked desperate for assistance from a God that wouldn’t help. Lady Violet nibbled at her pudding as if she were enjoying a treat at the theatre.

Meanwhile, Lord Grantham became far more stern, though his level of severity was still like that of a disgruntled puppy when he tried. Nevertheless, he held a stiff finger out towards Mary, which he shook at her with no mistake in his meaning, “We’ll have enough of that without any more _implications_ about what kind of foul behavior may or may not have been harbored beneath this roof.” He beheaded the top portion of his spotted dick with a rather quick slice of his spoon, shoveling up the remains and bringing them to his mouth. “I think we’ve all agreed to leave well enough alone,” he warned all his daughters before turning to Thomas, and adding, “And what we don’t know, can’t hurt us, isn’t that right?”

“Too right, m’Lord,” agreed Thomas in a voice so monotone, it barely resembled his usual candor. Again, Jimmy tried to check his reflection for a hint as to what Thomas might really be thinking, but still found Thomas’s mirrored self oddly quiet. The whole display was troubling to him, even more so than the usual distress about what it meant to love a man like Thomas.

“Footmen and hallboys and valets from London to Edinburgh,” Lady Mary couldn’t help but interject once the table had returned to peaceable silence. She had grabbed the edge of the table so that she could lean in over plate in a most conspiratorial and unladylike way. “Most of them are apparently claiming to have been coerced – I do recall he was particularly _coercive_ with _me_. So I suppose I’d just like to know if he was just as much so with someone _else_ in this house.” She was boring a stare through Thomas’s chest that made it very obvious she knew _exactly_ who her competition had been.

Even the rouge tone had waned from Thomas’s face, leaving him as deathly pale as a ghost. Only Jimmy noticed.

“Barrow,” Lady Mary addressed the tall underbutler again; “Surely you could tell us a bit about it – _unless_!” Lady Mary let out a loud gasp that was in no way meant to be polite, but instead rather overdramatic. “Was it…” Lady Mary paraded on at the expense of Lord Grantham’s nerves – and Thomas’s dignity. “Was it _you_ , Barrow? Was our Duke of Crowborough – who Papa so _desperately_ wanted for his eldest daughter – was he spending his nights here learning a bit of _Mancunian_ hospitality up in the attics?”

Lady Mary was the only one who laughed, while Lord Grantham let out an immensely horrified gasp. Everyone else just stared at their plates in embarrassment, hating that despite Lady Mary’s poorly-timed jape, there was an alarming amount of truth no one wanted to acknowledge. Thomas weathered it all as someone who had been standing out in the lashing rain his whole life, while Jimmy felt himself begin to crumble.

“ _Mary_!” Lord Grantham didn’t seem able to restrain himself from slapping the table this time, and the impact of his hand twisted the tablecloth and made some of the silverware jump in fright. “If you think it’s a joke that we might have had police sniffing around the estate for that kind of debauchery _again_ , I’d find myself quite concerned. And if Barrow is sensible enough to have learned a lesson from such abhorrent mistakes once, I’m sure he’d thank you not to go insulting his masculinity with the suggestion he’d exercise such foul judgment again. Or ever!”

Another incredibly theatrical sigh escaped Lady Mary: “Oh, please, Papa, we all _know_ about Barrow – “

From the other end of the table, Lady Rose spoke up in an attempt to be diplomatic. “Yes, but maybe we ought not make Barrow the topic of an affair that has nothing to do with him,” she said, lifting a finger in an effort to derail the unnecessary attention that was being drawn to Thomas and his sexuality. Her valiance fell mostly short.

“Oh, fine,” shrugged Lady Mary, shifting in her chair to face another edge of the room. Jimmy realized a heartbeat too late that she had turned her attention to him, and felt the horizon tilt as she asked him with hone precision: “James, then. Perhaps _you_ have a little insight you could share?”

It was Jimmy’s worst nightmare. The world ticked to a slow drag, and he felt like the entire room was waiting on his answer for days and days. Something about the slanted perception he had of his surroundings made him feel as though he had been shoved overboard, flailing moorless through the salty deep. Above him, he could catch the rippled silhouette of Thomas’s reflection in the mirror, watching him drown with a helpless expression. Just as quickly as Lady Mary had honed in on Thomas, she had managed to see through –  

“Enough of this!” The sound of Lord Grantham’s voice hoisted Jimmy back to the carpeted floor of the dining room, cuing the world back to its usual gait. He steadied himself in time to see the earl stand up, signaling that the meal had reached its end. Lord Grantham stomped away from the table in a mood, moving too quickly for Mr. Carson, Thomas and Jimmy to pull out the chairs for the ladies to catch up with him.

“I think I’ll have a cocktail in the drawing room, Carson,” said Lady Mary unimportantly, who was sweeping away from the table without much care for social decorum. “I need to relax.”  

“As does every soldier who takes a victory,” muttered Lady Violet, who followed after Lady Mary in a surprising show of solidarity. The other women filed after them, abandoning the remains of their violent supper to be dealt with by the servants. Mr. Carson picked up the tail end of their procession, his duties to be continued with them in the drawing room. Jimmy let out a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding once they were gone.

Thomas, meanwhile, was still oddly somber, which stood out to Jimmy as worrisome. For an awkward quarter of an hour, they worked in silence to clear away what was left of the food, delivering defeated platters and dishes to the servery, where things could be organized and returned to the proper destination. There was a strange moment where Jimmy, carrying a stack of plates, nearly ran straight into Thomas, who had been on his way back into the dining room to collect more from the table. They danced back and forth in the wordless two-step of two people who had fallen out of rhythm. Jimmy was rapt upon the floral design painted on the china, oblivious to the direction Thomas’s attention took as they loitered.

They fell to a stand-still. Jimmy’s long fingers curled around the ridged edges of the piled dishware, and Thomas let out a slow, heavy breath. Then, evenly, he said, “I’m sorry you had to be pulled into all that.”

“Made it out alive,” Jimmy rejoined dispassionately. “I guess.” He was very poor at acting like there was nothing bothering him, or that he was completely impervious to the route the conversation had taken at dinner. But he didn’t want to talk about it, quite content to ride high on the enormity of his misery over it.

“Could’ve been worse,” said Thomas with a telltale edge on his tone, though he remained collected. He was much less interested in perpetuating the unpleasant weather.

He made to maneuver around Jimmy, but Jimmy suddenly found his sync, and remained in his path. “Yeah, it could’ve been,” Jimmy muttered at a pudding stain that was smeared across the top plate in his stack. “Not much worse, though. That were practically hell.”

“No need to get worked up on it, right?” Thomas said as his hands found the stack of plates and slipped beneath to relieve Jimmy of it. His gloved fingertips brushed the fabric clothing Jimmy’s knuckles, but it was enough to jostle the moment. Quietly, Thomas pulled the plates into his own safe keeping and turned back towards the servery, murmuring mostly to himself, “No harm done.”

The reaction Jimmy gave was a colossal one, and snapped through the abandoned dining room. “No harm done?” Jimmy spat with unexpected vehemence, nearly shocking the dishware out of Thomas’s steady hands. He stormed after Thomas, grabbing a handful of Thomas’s tailcoat with enough force to make one of its decorative buttons rip free of its mooring. The brass piece hit the hardwood floor with a decisive _tink_ that made the earth move under their feet. “You tell me again – _no harm done_ ,” Jimmy growled under his breath, glaring down at the button, which glimmered dully in the amber lighting.

At this, Thomas’s annoyance to bubbled to the surface. “What’s your problem, ey?” Thomas huffed, setting the plates down and shoving them roughly towards the back of the counter in the servery. He turned around and loomed in the doorway separating the dining room from the little pantry. He looked more like the working class boy that lived beneath the classy velour of service hanging between the two posts as he said flatly, “It’s not like anyone were talkin’ about _you_.”

“Yeah, yeah, certainly did hear a lot about _you_ ,” Jimmy said, sweeping his hands out to the side in irritation. Then he hit the nub of it, and complained, “What about that duke, eh? What were all that about?”

“I don’t see why it’s your business,” Thomas answered tersely. He grabbed Jimmy forcefully by the wrist and dragged him into the servery. Then he threw the door closed, sealing them into the tiny prep room in relative privacy, and then turned around, barring the way with his arms spread between the posts once more. Filling the space with his suddenly imposing figure, Thomas seemed to rise from a mysterious depth that pooled around him like a sea of shadow.

An uncomfortable shiver dropped through Jimmy’s chest and wobbled nauseatingly in his stomach. He cleared his throat and tried his best to mirror Thomas’s posture in the opposing doorway, which led to the servants’ stairs. “I sorta do think it’s me business,” he said contrarily, hoping he didn’t come off as poorly as he felt. “I feel like a proper fool, me. Hearin’ about some duke’s harem of boys, and _you_ – you barely denyin’ that you were his prize for courtin’ the likes of Lady Mary!”  

“It was nothing of the sort!” Thomas snapped back testily, his formal tone not one Jimmy was used to hearing between the two of them. “Besides, what good would it’ve done to drag it out? Put me in the clink while you’re at it. It’s personal, and my own business – and _a long time ago_ , so leave it! It’s not like I’m stood here holding a magnifier up to everything _you’ve_ ever done.”

“Can’t’ve been _that_ long ago. For you, anyway,” Jimmy muttered, though his words seemed to reverberate loudly in the small pantry. Only a few feet stood between them, but Jimmy felt like he’d been thrown miles and miles away from Thomas. He hated the way his distorted reflection frowned back at him in the piles of silver and china that rose up on the counters around them: it was like he was being watched by his own battered and detached soul. He hated it even more when his nervous glances flitted up to Thomas and found the underbutler distant and cold. Jimmy’s heart constricted like it was in pain, his mouth moving of its own volition: “I thought you loved me for ages and ages. I were just startin’ to believe it were real, too.” Then, feeling unexpectedly lonely, he stared at his gleamingly buffed shoes and loathed the very ground they straddled.

It was a long sigh from Thomas that broke the tension that crackled through the servery. Jimmy looked up in time to see Thomas’s arms drop limply to his sides, causing the rising sense of dread that had cloaked him running away like melting ice. There was still something particularly _dark_ about the way Thomas continued to stand there, but the frightfulness had been replaced with a thrill Jimmy realized he had hated to be without – even if it had only been for a few moments. It was akin to being dunked under water and held there until the bubbles started to choke.

“You know I have, Jimmy,” said Thomas, peering softly at Jimmy through his heavy eyelashes. “But just because I’ve been driftin’ all this time without you doesn’t mean I wanted to be _alone_ , neither.”

The comment struck a chord with Jimmy, suddenly realizing that he had no idea what sort of suffering Thomas had likely endured through the centuries. At once, Jimmy became insulted by his own selfishness. He had taken for granted the stories Thomas had imparted to him about their shared past lives – and the obliviousness with which Jimmy had lived and died hundreds and hundreds of times over. But Thomas didn’t have that luxury. Thomas had to salvage his own existence from a wreckage of humanity that knew not what it did as it tortured him through the ages. _Life was long_ , Jimmy thought with startling clarity, _but Thomas’s is far, far longer._

There was a poem that went something like that – he was fairly certain. He stalled to silence as he pondered over the shadows that lurked between all the moments that flew through his fingers. He wondered how the world would end.

Quietly, Thomas broke the stillness. “Philip was kind to me – kinder than most people have been,” he said, trying to help Jimmy understand the best he could. “Until he couldn’t be anymore.” Thomas shrugged, though the look on his face didn’t quite match the unimportant gesture: “Such is the way of this world. It weren’t his fault, and I don’t blame him for what he’d done to me. I can’t, really.”  

Jimmy hadn’t evolved to being completely comfortable with the topic, but he forced himself to face the fear – for his own sake as much as Thomas’s. His gloved fingers found the pull of a nearby silverware drawer, which he tugged at nervously as he spoke.

“So he hurt you, did he,” Jimmy mumbled, not sure if he really wanted the clarification. If Thomas had been hurt, it meant there had been feelings at stake, and the very thought was enough to plant a discordant seed of envy within Jimmy. It was even more bitter than the one he’d swallowed when dreaming of Thomas and the blind soldier.

“We were goin’ to run away together,” Thomas surmised with a bit more ease than Jimmy was capable of. “Nowhere I couldn’t’ve got to on me own if I wanted, I s’pose, but I liked the idea of it. Of escapin’ _with_ somebody instead of just dyin’ again and again,” Thomas glanced at Jimmy, who was listening with a sort of coiled agitation that looked like it might snap at any moment. “An’ he did run, in the end,” Thomas added; “Just not with me.”  

“But what if you _had_?” Jimmy cried, the words squeezing up through his throat so brusquely, they made the flesh raw. He nearly ripped the drawer out of its burrow in agitation, which was forceful enough to surprise even Jimmy, himself.

The outburst overshadowed Thomas’s low mumble of, “Never with me.”

“But you were in love with him, right?” Jimmy exhaled slowly as he started to toy with the drawer again. His downcast eyes caught glints of the cutlery inside as it clinked about with each push and pull he gave it. “So in love with him that if you’d’ve gone off with him, you wouldn’t have to – to think of me at all.”

“He certainly didn’t put me through the emotions you do,” Thomas said curtly, his eyes darting up and down the length of Jimmy’s form. He clearly was not keen to justify himself to Jimmy. “It was a time and a place. A fallin’, faded star. Not like you at all.”

Jimmy slammed the cutlery drawer again, its thump a more telling comment on the matter than anything he could have actually said. His face was burning, his cheeks flushed as though he’d just run forty laps around the house without stopping. The tempo of his heart coursed with adrenaline, and something flared up within him, though he couldn’t rightly identify what exactly it was. It was more like a color flashing behind his eyes, the blur of it making it hard to catch even as it crashed into him like the weight of the entire world was hitting him all at once. All he knew, as he marched across the tiny pantry in four strides and slapped his gloved hands against Thomas’s delicately angled cheekbones, was that he didn’t want to be just some hot flash in Thomas’s sky. He wanted to be the _moon_.

Then his mouth was on Thomas’s and his vision seared with hues he thought only existed in Kadath. He touched his lips to Thomas’s just so he could know that the love he saw whenever Thomas looked at him was something real – something more powerful than even the dangerous barbs in the world that threatened to take Thomas away from him. But there was magic in his begging, especially as Thomas’s mouth became pliable beneath his, and the kiss evolved into a mutually tender gesture. Jimmy slipped his tongue against Thomas’s and felt a jolt run through him, straight to his loins, where a need unlike any other had begun to take shape. The claws that had hooked so viciously through Jimmy’s soul had been torn free, leaving his heart to beat as it never once had before. Thrown up on a wave that had crashed on the wet sand and borne him out on a far-flung tide of starshine, where they were alone in the universe and Thomas knew how much Jimmy _adored_ him. The press of Thomas’s mouth was hot against his, and so startlingly _real_ , Jimmy almost couldn’t believe that he’d been content to settle so long for imaginary satisfaction, when there was this, this, _this_.

When Thomas’s hands fell upon Jimmy, similarly gloved as they were, Jimmy felt himself unwinding with ecstasy at even the smallest touch. There was something incredibly intimate about this new interaction between them – one that overshadowed even the most wicked of dreamscaped encounters. It was as if he’d been watching his whole life in a cloudy mirror that faded into this exact, beautiful second, and now the rest of it was falling away around him in a stream of trembling stars. He’d gone overboard in his haste to catch up, but he didn’t care: wrapped up in the Milky Way with Thomas, Jimmy was shot with pleasure like he’d never known. But then again, he’d never _dreamed_ he’d love somebody like Thomas. 

He was vaguely aware of Thomas’s movements as he pushed Jimmy up against the china-laden counter, hitching Jimmy up onto its lipped edge with strong hands that slipped beneath Jimmy’s thighs and lifted. The clink and clatter of displaced dishware resounded behind Jimmy as Thomas pushed him against the cabinets that lined the space above the counter. Neither made a fuss when a stray goblet was shoved to the floor by a grasping hand: the crystal exploded into a nebula of singing shards at Thomas’s heel, but Thomas was too busy exploring the contours of Jimmy’s mouth with his tongue, and Jimmy’s ankles were hooked round his thighs to hold him fast.

Jimmy flung his arms around Thomas’s neck and pushed his long fingers through his black hair, upsetting it from its pomaded slick. Thomas was tearing at Jimmy’s bowtie and opening his collar, his mouth sliding around Jimmy’s strong jaw and down his neck with lustful little nips. Jimmy panted and scrunched his fingers against Thomas’s scalp, almost unable to comprehend how more viscerally he _burned_ for Thomas outside the confines of their dreamspace. His belly seared just as his flesh beneath Thomas’s sinful lips: the lavender that had flavored Thomas’s tongue overwhelmed Jimmy’s senses every time he swallowed. It was far richer than even the wildest fantasy, and it made Jimmy crave more. It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss, and –

They paused long enough to catch a proper respite of air. “The whole world’s on fire,” Jimmy whispered, low and husky against Thomas’s mouth. “The world’s on fire, and no one can save me but you.”

Thomas’s smile was serene, though it only tugged briefly at his shapely mouth as he touched his forehead to Jimmy’s. “You woke up,” he murmured with a slight tremble, like he was overwhelmed by some secret emotion. The blue of Jimmy’s eyes flooded his vision. “You _see_.”

It took Jimmy a few moments to comprehend what Thomas had said, but when he did, he found himself similarly floored by the understanding of it all. “I see you,” Jimmy answered softly. “Only you.”

Something that didn’t need any more words to be exchanged hovered in the space between them. Jimmy had never felt like this before, yet there was a familiarity to it all. He had thought it was uncharacteristic for him to be so completely _in love_ with someone – and even more so to have been the one that anyone in the whole universe would ever choose to pore over with such affection. But he knew it for certain now – like a vacancy that had been waiting to be filled within him had suddenly been overcrowded with a restless pulse he soon realized was merely the urgency of his own heart.

Suddenly, a sound from the dining room brought Jimmy crashing back down to earth. Thomas sucked in a breath and disengaged himself from Jimmy just in time for Mr. Carson to come banging into the servery, demanding to know why the dining room was still in a state. His bushy eyebrows twitched as he scanned the disarray surround Thomas and Jimmy, his discontent finally settling on the broken goblet on the floor.

“Just _what_ has gone on in here?” he asked tightly, almost as if he wasn’t entire sure he wanted to know the answer. “I daresay things are worse off than when we last left them after dinner. Which is an _accomplishment_.” The thinly veiled sarcasm was enough to suggest exactly how the dinner conversation had proceeded in the drawing room.

“I think I’m ill, Mr. Carson,” Jimmy said with an effectual swoon. The pinkness in his cheeks certainly gave the lie credence.

Thomas was quick to fall in line with Jimmy, too much of the same mind to have to worry about accidentally losing the plot. “He did his best through dinner, but first moment we had to ourselves, he needed to sit,” Thomas said, resting a hand on the counter just behind Jimmy’s thigh, where his thumb stroked the velvet stripe on Jimmy’s trousers in secret. “We’re lucky we just had the one casualty,” he added, his eyes flicking down to the broken goblet, whose shards drew a sparking trail from Thomas and Jimmy to the toes of Mr. Carson’s polished shoes.

Mr. Carson narrowed his eyes, certain there was another version of the story he wasn’t hearing, but unwilling to press it. “Very well,” he acquiesced, his own exhaustion momentarily visible in his tired, old eyes. “Help James to bed. It won’t do to have him collapsing in the middle of some hallway – which he seems to have found habitual as of late,” Mr. Carson suggested, clearly not in the mood to get into it. Still, he would have been remiss if he hadn’t been sure to add, “But _not_ before you find some maids or hallboys to finish in here.”

“Of course,” said Thomas with the sort of politeness that sounded nice in upstairs conversations, but Jimmy found littered with a sly breed of cynicism that was almost impossible to detect otherwise. Thomas glanced at Jimmy, his catlike graces coming to the fore as he said, “I’d be more than happy to.”

Shooting a wary look at his two most irreverent staff members, his certainty that they were up to no good a neatly stifled topic, Mr. Carson fought the urge to sigh and merely said, “I expect both of you to be on your toes for tomorrow.” Then he swept by them, passing through the servery to the back staircase and vanishing through the door. The weight of his footsteps could be heard echoing for at least two flights before Thomas and Jimmy could be sure that he was gone.

“Well,” said Thomas, turning to face Jimmy coquettishly. “D’ya need me help gettin’ to bed?”

At this, Jimmy sucked in a heavy breath, for there was no mistaking exactly what Thomas was implicating. Despite the power of their first mortal kiss, Jimmy couldn’t help but feel like things were tumbling at a pace much too quickly for him. He already regretted rushing into a number of other things blindly and idiotically, and the last thing he wanted to do was ruin what they’d just shared with some mistake found in hurrying. He prayed Thomas would understand.

“Let’s just take it slowly, yeah?” he said as he slid off the counter, landing on his feet with a thump that made all the china in the room rattle. Frankly, his entire body was still quivering with the headiness of their kiss, and it only made him shake to think what furthered intimacy outside of Kadath would do to him. He wanted it – he wanted it almost too much to let himself. He wanted enough that it should be perfect when the time came.

Thomas, meanwhile, was crestfallen. There was a spirit of rejection about him, though he didn’t say as much. Jimmy could tell by the way his shoulders drooped slightly, and way he lifted his chin when he swallowed. Jimmy hated seeing him like that, and was moved to boldly grab Thomas’s hands, pulling them towards his chest. Laying Thomas’s white fingers against the stiff bosom of his shirt, he pressed Thomas’s blushed knuckles so that Thomas’s fingertips were tight against the contour of his chest.

“My love’s no lie. I hope you do believe me,” Jimmy said, carefully watching Thomas’s face as he examined the juxtaposition of his hand against Jimmy’s shirt. A brass shirt stud gleamed like a guiding star at the split between Thomas’s index and ring finger. Jimmy covered it with his other hand, holding Thomas’s like it was a delicate, trembling creature. “Because when I kiss you, it’s no dream anymore. Me heart makes a sound – can’t you hear it?”

Thomas mouthed a ghostly, “Yes,” that bore no vocalism, nor did it need to. His respirations came slow and measured, yet somehow made him appear perfectly serene and still.  

“It never moves for anyone the way it moves for you,” Jimmy murmured, almost as impressed by such an admission as Thomas was. He glanced up at the taller man and was amazed by the poignancy of how he beheld him: how brilliantly he shone even in the buzzing electric light, an ethereal creature swathed in luminescent shades and streaks of black shadow. It was so otherworldly, Jimmy had to tell himself he had to hold onto each of these falling moments as they flitted through his reality like dancing faeries in the night. Thomas’s palm burned sensuously through his clothing – a reminder of just how real it all was.

“I know,” Thomas said, pressing his hand more fervently against Jimmy’s solar plexus. “It’s the same for me.”

“Is it really?” Jimmy wondered, unable to swallow the question.

“I was dead and trapped in me own nightmares until you came. You brought me to life – made my lifeless heart stir,” Thomas reminded him. “This world’s an ugly place, and you’re hardly anyone’s angel. But you’re so beautiful to me.”

Jimmy decided it would be alright to kiss Thomas again. Just the once before bed, and very quickly at that, lest someone barge in on them and see. Before they crossed the Lethe hallway between their garrets and found each other again in dreams.

Just the once. 

Then dreams.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to everyone who's been reading this! I'm sorry for the slow updates again. I appreciate any patience you still have for this! God, I wish I didn't have so many fic ideas, haha.
> 
> The poem Jimmy is thinking about is 'The Hollow Men' by TS Eliot. Of course haha. If you haven't gathered by now, I love him <3


End file.
